Divyajyoti Singh is the eldest child of Puri King Gajapati Dibyasingha Deb. She is married to Yuvraj Riddhiraj Singh, a scion of the erstwhile princely state of Danta in Gujarat. She stays with her husband in Danta. They also look after their heritage property called Bhavani Villa Danta, which runs back to a couple of 100 years.

The family has a stud farm of Marwari horses and it is set amidst the lush green Aravalli Hills, which is a leopard country. Singh's father-in-law Mahipendra Singh of Danta is the Maharana of Danta. He performs the tradition of Navratri Seva Puja every year at the famous Ambaji temple in Gujarat. Divyajyoti's husband Yuvraj Riddhiraj Singh looks after the property and family businesses in Danta.

Educated at Mayo College, Ajmer (postgraduate in psychology), Divyajyoti also briefly worked as a teacher at a public school in Bhubaneswar. She is interested in writing on various subjects and has shared her thoughts on the rath yatra on request from The Telegraph

It is a great privilege to have been born in such a family. I feel truly blessed and humbled that we are a family that has been serving the Lord since many, many centuries.

As a child I remember year after year celebrating the magnificent festival of rath yatra in Puri. Watching lakhs of people absorbed in complete devotion and surrendering to God's energy and divinity.

When one pulls the ropes of the chariots there is a great sense of love and a divine bonding between God and devotee.

It is difficult to express in words the power and energy that you feel among the sea of people, as they pull the ropes and the chariots move, driven by the force of love and devotion of the Lord's devotees from all across the world.

I have had the most beautiful opportunity of travelling abroad, from the US to Europe and have been blessed to witness the festival of rath yatra in many different places and in a number of different ways. Being from Odisha and especially being a part of the serving royal family, I feel an inborn sense of respect for the glorious heritage and the traditions of Lord Jagannath.

Words are not enough to explain the emotions and deep sense of wonder and devotion that I feel when I see my father Gajapati Maharaja Dibyasingha Deb perform the cherra pahara (chariot sweeping) rituals on the chariots.

I believe it is very important to have a deep sense of pride and respect for one's tradition, one that is so glorious and all encompassing. It celebrates the omnipresent and all pervading energy of Lord Jagannath in the universe on the day of rath yatra every year.

Being someone from the temple city family of Odisha and another big temple city family of Gujarat, namely Danta, I feel like I have an extended responsibility of carrying forward the old traditions of serving the Lord. It has been a while since I saw rath yatra in Puri but I intend to go next year with my family.

In 2007, when my mother Maharani Sahiba of Puri performed the seva at the Jagannath temple in Puri, I was present with my husband and it was a very memorable as well as a historic event. I am very well aware that people look up to my father as a living deity - Chalanti Vishnu, as they say. He is definitely a very spiritually evolved person and I cannot deny, but to some extent, I inherently look up to him as a living deity besides being my father. In reality and in the true sense of the tradition, the Gajapati is a humble servant (servitor) of the Lord and they do not ascribe any shred of divinity on themselves.

As far as the growing lack of faith in the new generation is concerned, I believe India is a country in transition. It is evolving and no matter how far today's generation of today is moving ahead with technology and the fast pace of life, it is also somewhere constantly evaluating and reassessing the significance of old beliefs and incorporating values at the same time.

I would like to believe that it's this flux between the old and the new that the children today are re-evaluating and adapting the values to modern living that are less conservative and perhaps less ritualistic. The sense of respect and attitude of gratitude must never be forgotten by the children of today because we are what we are and we have what we have because of our ancestors so we must be grateful always and be conscious of this eternal truth.

Even if the generation now moves away from the values that were inculcated in the olden days it cannot go too far because they, in their own way, figure out that it is the values that give them the grounding and balance in life. It is so important.

Hence, even if they oscillate between the good and the bad they are not very far from what was taught at home. I think the older generation needs to be a little more tolerant and at the same time be constantly supportive and patient.