With an unwavering devotion towards Lord Ram and a desire to fulfill his ’kar sevak’ father’s dream, a 64-year-old man from the city has embarked on thousands of kilometres of padayatra towards Ayodhya to present gold-plated footwear for the God, coinciding with the consecration of the grand temple on January 22. Challa Srinivas Sastry is traversing the Ayodya-Rameswaram route, covered by Lord Ram during ‘Vanavas’ (exile) in reverse. He said he wanted to undertake the journey in the reverse order touching all the Shiva Lingas established by the Lord en route and began his trudge on July 20.
Sastry has already covered several places such as Puri in Odisha, Trimbak in Maharashtra and Dwaraka in Gujarat. He said he would be covering a distance of nearly 8000 km by foot, carrying on his head the footwear that he would hand over to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath upon reaching the holy city.
Sastry said he has been following the map “found out” by Dr Ramavatar, a retired Income Tax Department official who did research for 15 years on the passage that Lord Ram followed during Vanavas. “My father participated in Karseva in Ayodhya. He was a strong devotee of Lord Hanuman. His desire was to see the Ram temple built in Ayodhya. As he is no more, I decided to fulfill his desire,” Sastry told PTI.
Sastry said he has donated five silver bricks so far as part of his contribution to the Ram temple after the Supreme Court verdict in 2019. “I am currently carrying gold-plated ‘padukalu’ (footwear) made with ’panch dhatu’ (five metals) to be given to Lord Shri Ram,” he further said.
He is about to reach the destination in less than two weeks. Sastry, however, had to break his march for a brief period as he had to go to the UK in between and later resumed his walk from where he stopped in Tamil Nadu.
With five others, he is currently in Chitrakoot in UP and about 272 KM from Ayodhya, Sastry said. He is hoping to reach the destination in about 10 days. Sastry, who covers 30 to 50 km a day, said the value of the article he is carrying was about Rs 65 lakh, some of which was donated by others.
Founder of the Ayodhya Bhagyanagar Sitarama Foundation in the city, he has plans to settle down in Ayodhya permanently and intends to construct a house there. A grand Ram Temple in the Lord’s birthplace will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 22.
One of Sastry’s sons, Challa Pavan Kumar is the first blade runner in India and won several medals, he said. Sastry said he had worked with several film studios as a sound engineer.
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