A silk sari weaver-cum-designer Jujaru Nagaraju from the town has created a special cloth nick-named Rama Koti Vastram, which is 60 meters long and 44 inches wide, on which “Jai Shri Ram” letters have been ingrained 32,200 times in 13 Indian languages along with 168 different pictorial depictions of Lord Ram’s life from the Ramayana.
Announcing the making of the cloth and publicly releasing it here on Wednesday, Dharmavaram MLA Kethireddy Venkatarami Reddy appreciated the efforts of Mr. Nagaraju to give better publicity to the skills of Dharmavaram weavers.
Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Nagaraju said the cloth weighed 16 kg and it took him a little over 4 months with three persons working on it daily. A commerce graduate and weaver by profession, the 40-year-old designer took personal interest to depict all the life of Lord Ram so that curiosity about Ramayana was generated among children of the present generation.
He invested ₹1.5 lakh from his own savings to create the cloth and is looking forward to the district administration or general public to provide him space to display his cloth safely in Puttaparthi and Anantapur initially, before he sends it to Ayodhya Lord Rama Temple as a gift from his side.
He said weaving was his family profession and if there was will this art could be passed on to the posterity.
