How Ram Lalla idol came alive

How Ram Lalla idol came alive

Did the Ram Lalla idol get transformed after the ‘pran pratishtha’ ceremony? It did, according to its sculptor Arun Yogiraj.

Arun Yogiraj, who spent seven months away from his family, devoting every moment to chiselling and carving the ‘shyam shila’ that would take the form of Ram Lalla was amazed at the transformation.

“Nirman hote samay alag thhe, sthaphit hone ke baad alag thhe. Mujhe laga ki ye mera kaam nahi hai. Ye to bahut alag dikhte hai. Bhagwan ne alag roop le liye hai (The idol looked different when it was being carved but looked completely different after the ‘pran pratishtha’ ceremony,” Arun Yogiraj told India Today TV.

“Ram Lalla looked completely different. It didn’t feel like it was my work. Lord Ram had completely transformed,” Yogiraj said in the exclusive interview.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the chief ‘jajman’ of the ‘pran pratishtha’ ceremony. He had adhered to the strictest rituals for 11 days. He not only slept on the floor and sustained himself on a coconut-water-only diet, he even visited several temples.

That there was something magical in the air was not only felt by people present there. Guests attending the January 22 event were seen getting emotional. The magic cut through the television screens and even drawing rooms across the country felt the divine presence as conches were blown.

Then the cameras zoomed in, and the nation had a look at Ram Lalla’s face. The eyes of Ram Lalla captivated everyone. So did His smile. Crores of people left a gasp of amazement.

Beautiful beyond words! Mesmerizing! Divine!

That amazement wasn’t just reserved for the crores of people who were having their first ‘darshan’ of the idol from thousands of kilometres away. The person who spent months on end too remained transfixed by the idol’s transformation.

Discussing the mesmerising smile of Ram Lalla, Yogiraj pointed out that with stone, you have only one chance to work.

It was a divine force at work, believes Arun Yogiraj.

“It is not easy to bring bhaav (emotion) to a stone, and you have to spend a lot of time with it. So I decided I would be spending a lot of time with the stone, doing my homework, studying kids’ features, and everything else happened due to Ram Lalla,” said the Mysuru-based sculptor.

Yogiraj, a fifth-generation sculptor, believes everything happened because of Lord Ram.

“While celebrating Diwali in Ayodhya, I got lucky and saw young children celebrating the festival… and from there on I had an image in mind. So you can say everything came from Lord Ram,” Yogiraj said.

This story, which would leave masters of magic realism in amazement, doesn’t end here.

Arun Yogiraj is from a family of sculptors, but he went to work as a management executive after earning an MBA degree.

After working as an MBA executive, he answered his “innate calling” and joined his family profession in 2008.

Hadn’t he heard the calling, the sculptor of the Ram Lalla idol would have just kept tapping away at a keyboard in an office cubicle.

Arun Yogiraj was destined for something bigger. The Ram Lalla idol was meant to be carved by him.

The fifth-generation sculptor from Karnataka acknowledges that.

“Mere lalla ne mujhe aadesh diya, maine follow kiya (Lord Ram gave me the order, and I just followed it),” Arun Yogiraj said in the exclusive interview after the ‘pran pratishtha’ ceremony.

It’s truly a tale of transformation.