A temple, 169 years in the making

Through decades of design and reworks, hurdles in engineering and construction, HT pieces together how the grandeur of the Ram Temple was reclaimed

- Dhrubo Jyoti

Dappled slats of winter sunlight light up Snehlala Devi’s face as she sits on her haunches on this early January day, a small stone encircled in her fist, vigorously scrubbing the grime off an intricately carved slab of sandstone between her knees. Around her are her mother and sister-in-law and neighbours, all filing away decades-old slabs of varying sizes, using paper and stones to scour clumps of black soot gathered in crevices, their smudged faces shimmering with pride when an edge or a rim shines. In this workshop that she shares with 25 others, she has spent the last 1.5 years painstakingly scrubbing stone slabs clean, each of them taking between 15 and 30 days. Yet, there is little sign of fatigue as Devi’s nimble fingers dance around the slab balanced between her knees. “Who else can tell their children that we did something for Ram?” she says, her family members joining in choral agreement.