Ram Mandir: Ram Lalla Comes Home to Ayodhya

On 22 January 2024, Ayodhya welcomed Ram Lalla home. The pran pratishtha, the ritual that invokes life into a murti, was performed in the midday Abhijit muhurat, and diyas were lit in homes across India and around the world.

The murti, named Balak Ram, shows Shree Ram as a five year old boy. Carved from black stone by the Mysuru sculptor Arun Yogiraj, it stands 51 inches tall.

The temple rises in the Nagara style: 161 feet high, with three storeys and five mandapas, built without iron. Its chief architect, Chandrakant Sompura, belongs to Gujarat's renowned Sompura family of hereditary temple builders, and his grandfather Prabhashankar Sompura designed the rebuilt Somnath temple. The same Gujarati family that raised Somnath from its ruins has now shaped Ram Lalla's home.

Every Ram Navami at solar noon, a beam of sunlight travels through mirrors and lenses to place a tilak on Balak Ram's forehead. This Surya Tilak was engineered by scientists of CBRI Roorkee and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, and it shone for the first time on 17 April 2024. For the prince of the Suryavansh, the Sun dynasty, it is as if his ancestor himself performs the tilak.

GujjuCal marks Ram Navami every year on Chaitra Sud 9.