01 Jan

Next morning, when his men would have assembled to start the construction again, Colonel Smith shared his dream with them. In their collective despair arising from unsuccessful attempts at building the factory, they would have decided take a chance with the dream and started to dig out the ground to retrieve the idol. I have no idea how they would have searched and found the exact place for digging. Either they would have tried at different places all over the premises or would have taken the help of some wise men who could sense the presence of any heavy object beneath the ground.

Next few days, the construction of the factory was stopped. Instead there were hectic activities in search of the idol. Finally, after a massive search and digging below the ground, the idol of Lord Hanuman was found. It must be a joyous moment not only for all the workers but also for the officers, especially Colonel Smith. He must have run to the site from his tent to see the last stages of the recovery of the idol. He must not have believed his eyes on what he would have seen. The dream that he saw was becoming a reality. Standing in front of the trench, he would have gone through the plethora of emotions ranging from disbelief to happiness and further to extreme sense of faith.

In despair, when I came out of the inner sanctum sanctorum, my eyes fell on the outer wall of the main dargah. There were two marble plates fixed on the walls on which the life story of the Shaikh was inscribed. Hazrat was born in Lucknow, in a family that had migrated to India from Iran. His grandfather and father were given the positions of responsibilities in the government of those times and they soon had become part of the elite class of Lucknow. Hazrat was born with a fire of longing in his heart to know almighty and was always searching for knowledge by going to one teacher to another. During such exercise, he came to know about a Sufi Shaikh Shah Maqsus Alam residing in the town of Banda. In the tender age of 13 years, he left the comforts of his home surreptitiously and went to Banda and became the disciple of Shaikh Shah Maqsus Alam. There he acquired spiritual and worldly education. After the demise of the shaikh, he went to Bareilly to become the disciple of Hazrat Tajul-Aulia Shah Nizamuddin Hussain (R.A.). Though later he got married and had children, but his life was totally dedicated to the Sufi ways and traditions. During the first war of Independence, Hazrat Meerja Agah came to Jabalpur. There he established his Sufi tradition called “Agahiya Order” and in 1918 AD, he went for his heavenly abode.\