Ultakham (Kanchanpur):

Not many people would believe that Lord Rama would take rebirth in the present material world. But a child born 18 months ago at Ultakham of Kanchanpur district’s Mahendranagar municipality has puzzled everyone with his supernatural powers.

Dressed only in a thin cotton cloth and the string of Rudraksha han-ging around his neck, the locals take him to be the reincarnation of Lord Rama, who was born in the Dwaparyug. Surprisingly, he weeps when he is dressed in other clothes, he does not like flower garlands, and he talks the epic of Geeta, Puran, Mahabharat.

Since his birth, he his food has only been his mother’s milk. The locals believe the infant has renounced from eating solid food and wearing other styles of clothes.

Born to Dilaraj Pant and Laxmidevi Pant on September 18, 2004, the locals address the infant simply as Bhagwan (Lord). He was born when his mother had stopped having her monthly periods and this fact itself is amazing.

He has four brothers and a sister. His mother Laxmidevi says, “A year before he was born, she was blessed by god in her dream. A god dressed in white came to her in her dreams and said a god would be born from her womb as a reincarnation.”

She added that she had not believed the prediction then, but now she says she stands corrected.

The child gestures with his hands and head as if he is blessing the visitors, locals say.

A visitor Purna Joshi said that she was barely able to move after suffering paralysis some seven-eight years ago and now she is well after she started worshipping this infant. Joshi said she had spent thousands of rupees in medical treatment only to be disappointed. Two days after she ate the prasad she received from the infant, she recovered her health, she said.

Twenty-two-year-old Kamala Pant has had the same experience. She was paralysed in her right hand and leg. She visited Ultakham on hearing the news of this supernatural infant, and she said that she was cured after she ate the prasad she was given.

This has been a year of gods for us — first there was the Buddha of Bara and now the Rama

of Ultakham. Perhaps even the gods love the Nepalis so much that they want to live amongst us... or do they want us to learn something more, something else from all these “incarnations” as we put it)?