Giant veena on show in Malaysia

An Indian cultural club has made the country's largest veena, a musical instrument, to be submitted as an entry into the Malaysia Book of Records.

Members of an Indian cultural club in Malaysia have made the country's largest veena, a stringed classical musical instrument, which is now on display at a university.

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The veena, measuring 10.3 metres long and 1.8 metres high with a 2.4 metre-wide base and costing about Malaysian Ringgit (RM) 25,000, is the work of 200 members of the Indian Cultural Club of the Universiti Utara Malaysia in Sintok, Kedah.

The instrument will be submitted as an entry into the Malaysia Book of Records, programme adviser Suresh David was quoted as saying by The Star newspaper.

"We have worked hard for more than a week to complete this project. We had to travel more than 100 km back and forth from the campus to a temple in Alor Star to build this wooden veena," David said.

Suresh, who is a third-year finance student, said a fund-raising campaign was initiated five months ago for the project. "We managed to raise RM 29,000."

Indian fine art experts R Karunagaran and S Sarawana were the designers.