Ever since I received the invitation for the प्राणप्रतिष्ठा सोहळा from the Shri Ramjanmabhoomi Ayodhya Teerthakshetra Nyas back in December, I always wondered what the experience of being at the event would be like. And honestly, while I was expecting something great, I was not at all prepared for the absolute euphoric wave (more like tsunami) of unadulterated joy & positivity that I experienced at the pranpratishtha event of Ram Lalla’s vigraha, in Ayodhya, on Sukla Paksha Dwadashi Vikram Samvat 2080 or January 22 2024 Gregorian Calendar.
I have been back home now for just over 2 days now, and it has finally sunk in what I have had the great pleasure and massive good fortune to have witnessed… And I have finally been able to look within to figure out what I felt that day and what I feel everytime I remember that day and those moments…
Why there was a spontaneous wetting of the eyes and why I realised it only when everything started to look blurred, I will never know. But the fact that it was so, is telling. There are moments which reach deep into you and touch your soul deep within, and this was definitely one such moment.
And I couldn’t get a smile off my face…
Anyway, let me start right from the beginning…
The invitation(s)…
So, sometime in December 2023, I got the call… and then the letter… letting me know that I had been invited to Ayodhya for the Pranpratishtha event… Was a thrilling day for me…
I was told that this electronic invite would be followed up by someone physically visiting my residence or office to personally invite me and deliver the physical invite. That happened in early January… Many thanks to Harsh Modi ji for doing this…
It is a good invite. It also had a booklet inside containing brief histories of many of the key karyakartas who have had a role to play in the 500+yr old struggle to have the temple rebuilt.
Unfortunately, I have lost the physical invite as I had carried it with me to the mandir on Jan 22nd and in the tight crowd during the darshan, It must’ve fallen from my hands… Anyway, thankfully I have taken photos of it…
Closer to date, other invitations started to come in – for the dinner scheduled for the night before, from the Raja of Ayodhya at the Rajsadan Palace in Ayodhya…
The next communique was for us to digitally register ourselves, using the invite code which we had to link to our respective Aadhar numbers… Once we did that, we received a digital confirmation pass, including a QR code which was to be scanned for entry access to the venue.
Travel to Ayodhya…
Was absolutely blessed & thanks to my boss, I managed to be included on one of the many charter flights which were ferrying VVIPs / celebs to & fro. It was a great flight, travelling with, among others, my boss – the legendary filmmaker Subhash Ghai, Sonu Nigam – one of my favourite singers, Om Raut (director of Tanaji, et al) & Bhushan Kumar (MD of TSeries) and 4 others (not putting their photos since I don’t know if they will be ok with it).
Was great to sit across from Sonuji actually chat with him about things, about how he does riyaaz, about his use (or lack thereof) of auto-tune… and of-course to be featured in a insta-reel he made… 😁 (I never thought that would ever happen that I would be in a Sonu Nigam insta-reel)
On landing at the airport, we were greeted by enthusiastic VHP workers with garlands & Jai Shri Ram shouts…
Ayodhya town was looking fabulous…
The dinner the night before, at Rajsadan…
(he also was our very gracious & generous host for the trip)
The morning of… the drive to the Mandir…
It was a fabulous 20 minutes. We left the hotel early, to try and beat the traffic and see some sights and see how well the town was decked up…
Getting into the Mandir…
And there was the RamMandir – looking magical & magnificent!
The temple complex was excellently decorated and done up… fit for the occasion…
Thanks to the category of invitee I was (thanks to my boss, where I work and what I have been doing in education for the past many years), I was sitting smack bang in front of the temple, just to the right of the main steps…
I turned around to see who was sitting beside me – it was Nobel prize winner Shri Kailash Satyarthi…
As we settled, down, they started to have some performances… Starting with Sonu Nigam… And he was brilliant!!!
After performances by Sonu Nigam, Malini Awasthi, Shankar Mahadevan, Hariharan & Kailash Kher, the official ceremony began with the arrival of Champat Rai ji on the stage who gave a detailed overview of the mandir – its construction and what materials have come from which states for the same and which are the people / companies involved in its construction…
And then the ceremony began with the arrival of PM Modi…
The proceedings of the pranpratishtha ceremony were being streamed live on LED panels to the audience… and about 35-40 mins later, we saw the murti with Ram Lalla’s eyes open.
Here are the moments at the time of / just after the pranpratishtha – everyone ringing a घंटी that the organisers had handed over to us, and rose petals were being showered over the audience…
A short while after the pranpratishtha, we had PM Narendra Modi along with CM Yogi Adityanath, RSS Sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat & others come out to the platform/stage and each of them spoke.
Some early moments of PM Modi’s address…
PM Modi’s address was one of the best ones he’s done so far. I know most of you would have watched it already, but am putting it out here all the same…
After the speeches and the departure of PM Modi, they started to make announcements on the procedure for the audience to enter the mandir for darshan. They allowed us in groups, block by block. It was rather chaotic, especially because the sadhus were really rushing forward. with lots of hustling and people (as expected) abandoned all sanity and ignored all the crowd movement / crowd management rules that the organisers had laid down…
And me entering the mandir…
The RamMandir is fantastically constructed and looks fabulous. WOW!!!
The first mandap of the RamMandir…
The 2nd mandap of the RamMandir and a video of the walk towards the gabhara / garbha-griha…
The last mandap of the RamMandir, just before the golden doors to the final mandap & the gabhara / garbh-griha…
And finally, after nearly half an hour (or maybe more), I was able to be within a few feet of the murti of Ram Lalla…
This was, without doubt, one of the most influential experiences of my life…
Epilogue…
I was also thrilled to meet some people who I really respect…
The journey back to Mumbai…
The journey back was eventful. Our charter flight was cancelled on the 22nd on account of bad weather, limited take-off/landing slots and pilot operating hours, so after waiting in the Ayodhya airport lounge for a few hours, we stayed back in a hotel in Ayodhya, arranged for us by the organisers… and travelled back to Mumbai on the 23rd afternoon (am not putting photos of flight back coz I’m not sure if everyone would be ok with me posting it in public)…
Let me end with some fantastic views of Maharashtra from the flight back (we were flying somewhere around Nashik I think).
And finally, some key observations, primarily about the organisation & planning of the event...
- Brilliantly planned. 3 invite stages, linking the final invite to our aadhar & the entry check by scanning the QRCode, to ensure no people can enter with fake / fraudulent invitations.
- Good planning at Ayodhya – the local transport allocations… Sending us printouts (see below) of the car passes in advance so we can write the local car numbers once we got them and stuck it on the car to avoid access issues.
- Great organisation and management within the mandir premises by the RSS. People were given a separate breakfast box. The empty box was collected after people had finished eating. Any trash thrown on the floor was cleaned up. Then people were given a lunch box after the pranpratishtha, which was also a kind of prasad (see below). That same box was collected too once everyone had eaten and all trash was cleaned up. Brilliant!
- The entry process into the mandir for darshan and the crowd management inside the mandir was the only thing that could have been better. Actually, it wasn’t weak as such, its just that everyone was excited (especially the sadhus) and flouted the crowd control / crowd management rules, so that ended up with a little bit of pushing-shoving in a tightly packed crowd.
- They had thought of everything – for people who don’t eat grain, they had a different prasad – without grain. Bhagwan Ram clearly supports a gluten-free diet. 😉
- I, like many others, had carried money / envelopes for hundi donation. Since the hundi boxes, etc were yet to be set up, the people inside the mandir refused to take the envelopes / cash but instead recommended that we donate online. This was BRILLIANT!!! Bhagwan Ram is now a part of Digtial India! 😁
All-in-all, this was an unbelievable, unexplainable experience. One which I will permanently remember. We 7-8 thousand people there experienced a collective wave of joy, euphoria and emotion that I have never experienced ever!!!
Post event communication and a unique gift…
Jsut today, I received this letter & an unbelievably unique gift.
The pack contained some more prasad, a silver coin with the Ram Darbar and a piece of the शिला (rock) from which the Ram Lalla vigraha has been shaped out of. These have refreshed all the same memories I had on the 22nd and the day before & after. And has filled me with the same pleasure all over again. 😌
Hello
I am a close friend of Pushan and Prachi Vaidya.
Today she shared the link of your blog and I can’t thank her enough for that.
I went through every word written, every pic clicked and every video filmed immediately and minutely.
Thank you very much for creating this blog as people like me could experience this once in a life time event, as if we were actually in Ayodhya.
धन्यवाद!
जय श्रीराम!
fabulous..the way you pen down things has given us experience as we too visited the temple.