I had never watched Ramlila so I went to the Red Fort grounds one evening to watch the epic being enacted. Found my way to the green room and spent time chatting with gods in the making.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, October 12, 2010
It took a few strokes of the brush, and greasy Camlin Oil Colour, to transform the mortal into the God he was to play. They were still using the old techniques. Black oil colour was best to paint moustaches, and dye eyebrows. This was in epic proportions, a morality play of good over evil, the characters had to be "done up" likewise.
Bhaskar Joshi, 23, a management student from Moradabad, was almost in a trance. Once in a while he liked to step into God's shoes. At 23, that was his high. With his lips painted bright red, and mascara loaded eyelashes, he felt beyond the mundane. The Ramlila was his arena. Here, he would weep, sacrifice, kill, forgive, repent, lament, go through all emotions and bring God to the masses.
Last year, the President folded her hands in front of the epic hero of the Ramayan. That was it. Other mortals would fall at his feet, look up at him with moistened eyes brimming with hope, prayer, devotion, everything.
He felt like the avatar. In the green room with its gauzy pink curtains, and tin trunks overflowing with God's garb, he sat with a coterie of friends, including Hanuman,who wore his shades and called him “Prabhu”. Hanuman had no business hanging around in the greenroom. Tonight, it was Manthra-Kaikeyee Samvad, a part of the epic that told the story of how the queen went into her “warth palace” as it was explained in a notebook designed especially for foreigners who the organizers expected would come by the dozen, and Ram's exile.
In the little tent that looked like a square box, fortified against mosquitoes that could spread the Dengue fever, something the foreigners were wary of as they poured into the national capital for the Commonwealth Games, with rectangular glass windows for viewing, a few Indians, mostly the privileged, sat. The Lav Kush Ramlila Committee had put up this little enclave with seating for 50 for the Germans, French, Australians, Kenyans, everyone that was not Indian. This was their commitment to merging the epic tale with yet another epic event – the CWG.
Indians were mostly confined to the grounds with its army of mosquitoes.
“We are habituated to this. We don't mind,” a committee member said. “Yesterday, a couple of Africans were in the tent watching the Ramlila. The notebook has all details of embassies and illustrations and maps. We have worked hard on this.”
Besides Ram and Sita, Shera, the official mascot, was prominent on the posters, on the little coffee mugs they had designed as part of the welcome kit for the people beyond the seas so they could take home the lessons from the epic.
Next to Joshi, Neha Vashisth, a 21-year-old “fresher” from the Uttar Pradesh town, was waiting to get her face painted. Among the various gods and his family, she, who was to play Sita, the wronged goddess who triggered the battle because Ravan, the anti-hero took a fancy for her, was looking too brown, too mortal.
Ram preferred this Sita. The other one who he acted with for the last three years got married. Besides, she looked much older than him. Neha was younger and he thought they looked together.
“He is handsome. He has good personality. I like him as Ram,” she said, blushing. “No, no affair between us.”
“I like this Sita,” Ram said, unabashed by Sita's denial.
Maybe there is an affair. All sorts of things happen when Gods and humans interchange roles. Million possibilities can arise.
For the Ramlila committee too, possibilities have come marching. Now, they are streaming live telecast of the nine parts of the epic on their website www.lavkush.com. Besides, a team of public relations strategists have totally delved into pitching faith to all. Already , 2200 members have joined the Facebook page. Big leap of faith for all.
They aren't twittering yet. In the server room at the back of the giant stage, there are laptops, entangled wires, harried staff.
They are trying to connect, merge the new and the old. Faith needs to be revived, sold in a package with freebies.
With Commonwealth Games consuming the imagination of the young and the faithless, they have a strategy too. Instead of Bollywood stars who the committee called to attract more public, this year they have banners with faces of the known Indian sports persons like Sania Nehelwal, Abhinav Bindra, and Vijendar, the boxer, a pin-up poster boy for the young girls who go gushing over his looks.
“Today, things have changed. Today Ramlila is standing with the country in its glorious moment of hosting the CWG. We are with it. We sent out 5 lakh invitations, we are into technology, everything,” Arjun Kumar Singh, 55, the “permanent” secretary of the committee, said.
For 31 years, he has been involved with promoting the faith, the values that the epic endorses through its characters.
As a kid, he watched the numerous small neighborhood Ramlilas.
“Ramlila is the solution to mankind's problems, to disintegrating families. They only need to learn from Ram and his brothers Bharat and Lakhsman the virtues of sacrifice, how to keep families together,” he said.
Arjun Kumar is in the construction business. Each year, he digs into his wealth like 20 others who are associated with the committee and funds the extravaganza at the Red Fort grounds.
It cost the committee Rs. 1 crore this year.
On the stage, Manthra was convincing the queen Kaikeyee to send Lord Ram into exile so her own son could get to rule Ayodhya. At 9:11 p.m., a power cut froze King Dashrath. At the moment, he was crouching on the floor, overcome with sadness and the price of his promise to his beautiful queen.
Manorama Joshi, who enacted the stepmother, was in her element. For a few seconds, she didn't move. Then she looked around, adjusted her hair, and took in the audience.
In the greenroom before it all started, the start of the 14-year-old exile and the making of the epic, Manthra stood, trying to fit a pillow in her already-bursting velvet bustier. For 32-year-old Sanjay Sharma, who always wanted to be an actor and even spent time lounging outside the filmistan studio in Mumbai hoping that someone would take notice of his acting talent, playing Manthra was a challenge.
For 12 years since he first got on to the stage and felt liberated, he had played the character of Lakshman, Lord Ram's brother, who accompanied him into the exile.
In Lakhman's character, he felt like a Black Cat Commando in his element. Once, the commandos gave him a thumbs up.
“There's anger in me. Lakshman was an angry man. In my life, I have anger too. He was also committed to sacrifice. I wanted to make my father, a railway official, proud of me, but he passed away. There's so much I wished for. But wishes are elusive beings. They never come true,” he said, chewing paan masala, holding his saree while the director fixed his hair.
“You see, I can do roles that no man here can. I can become this scheming Manthra. Why not,” he said.
The Ramlila was not just about faith then. It was also about pent-up frustration, broken dreams, crushed aspirations, and an outlet for the creative, artistic urge that never found a footing the other grand stage, the Bollywood.
Rishi Pal, in his white wig, was counting the beads he held. In his Saint Vashishth role, he felt he was doing great service to the cause of religion that was soon exiting the human mind and soul.
The 55-year-old has been part of the Ramlila for 40 years. The committee pays the artists a lump sum and bear their expenses for the 11 days that they are in Delhi, giving the national capital its tryst with gods.
“Ramlila has changed. Now, we don't wear garish makeup. It is more like Bollywood makeup but then the artist can come out more. The dark makeup hid the expressions,” he said. “Religion is important. I am doing my bit for it.”
Outside, in the barricaded seats, 32-year-old Satish Kumar, a Bihari migrant worker, sat engulfed with an overdose of faith and gods. Each time, Ram came on stage, he would fold his hands, utter small prayers that had remained unfulfilled.
“I come everyday. For me, he is god incarnate,” he said.
As Kaikeyee stomped and kicked and threw her bangles and beads that looked more like the Mardi Gras pink and green beads in her fit to have Dashrath announce her own son as the king, Kumar looked crestfallen. Of course he knew this was coming. But for god to go through all this, it wasn't a nice thing, he said.
On the periphery, there were food stalls. A woman in a bikini smiled from one the advertisemnts. Too many advertisements dotted the Ramlila landscape.
Rahul, a 12-year-old volunteer in his white trousers and shirt, was busy checking passes. For the last four years, he had been part of the Ramlila Committee as a volunteer. This was his service to go for a better life, a job, too.
“We are only sewaks,” he said. “God will give blessings.”
On the stage, Ram was preparing for his ordeal. The audience was “tch tch” on his plight. But the story had to go on. It would go on.
Kaikeyee, in her “warth palace” and in her black saree, had won the round. Dashrath lay slumped on the floor.
Manthra was busy chewing her gutkha inside. He had totally killed it. It was kick-ass, his performance.
Meanwhile, Shera looked a misfit in the battle of the evil and the good.
Going hi-tech, the future of Ramlila
An edited version of the story appeared in the Sunday Eye magazine of The Indian Express. on Oct. 24, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, October 19, 2010
Squeezed in between the Yellow Sea and the East Sea, the red dot showing Ramlila viewership seemed an anomaly.
Arjun Kuma Singh, the 55-year-old organizer, looked again. Yes, they were watching online Ramlila in South Korea. Total adrenaline rush.
Singh was kicked. His investment of Rs. 10 lakhs on making one of the oldest Ramlilas in the country, the Lav Kush Ramlila Committee, hi-tech by installing a separate server in the backroom, setting up a technical team headed by his son, invading the social networking website www.facebook.com and making Lord Ram a Facebook celebrity too, had paid off.
“Online Ramlila, live telecast is the only alternative to continue the faith. Else, all be lost. South Korea surprised me the most. Imagine, they were watching the live telecast there too,” Singh said.
On Monday, after eleven days of telecasting Ramlila with the help of three cameramen and six others, Singh was sitting with the Tata Communication Server representatives to discuss feedback. More than six lakh hits in 11 days on the committee’s website www.lavkush.com and it was from all over the world. The seas, the mountains, the
enmity, the foreign relations, all of those didn’t come in the way of Lord Ram making way to the thousands of screens worldwide at the click of the mouse.
Viewership spanned America, Dubai, Canada, England, South Asian countries and Gulf countries. Last year, they broadcast live the eleven parts of the grand narrative but it was through broadband and it was a failure like with other Ramlila committees too that were trying to go hi-tech, Arjun Kumar said.
This year, they connected the uudio and video input to a computer complete with a special software to stream the telecast online at Tata Communication Server through high speed internet connection. The streaming is then picked up by several servers located across the globe. Organizers said buffering would be no issue as the telecast can be viewed with as low as 250 kbps speed connection.
But on facebook, several members had issues with the buffering. As the battle between Sri Ram and the demon king Ravan, who abducted the god’s wife Sita, technical glitches as one tried to connect to the online Ramlila in Bhopal caused the sword to be stalled in the air.
Hanuman, the monkey god, was fixated in his antics as he flew in the skies. It was buffering, the epic.
But datacards weren’t capable of handling the war of epic proportions.
Speed was crucial. But of course the organizers are brainstorming on how to make it better next year. Even the effigies are going to be fitted with gadgets and gizmos and special effects so the charm in unparalleled like how Ravan effigy had tears in his eyes and had tape recorders fitted in his mouth for high-strung shrieks that seemed as if the effigy had suddenly turned human with all the attributes.
“You see, we did it for the first time. Now, we will go on twitter, other such sites. We needed to attract youngsters and empty stalls were an issue. We had been researching all through the year. We got calls from London, America asking us to come there and stage the Ramlila. All this was because we decided to go onine in a big way,” Arjun Singh said. “Hi-tech Ramlila is the way. This is the only
alternative.”We are the first ones to sue this separate server technique. There is only a 10-second telecast delay. Others have buffering issues because they are using broadband.”
It is not just the Lav Kush Ramlila Committee that decided to harness the powers and scope of Internet, but others too like the Nav Shree Dharmik Leela Committee that decided to integrate technology with spirituality and are present on Twitter, Orkut and Facebook.
Lord Ram needs networking, a viewer said.
“Facebook is crucial for his status. We need status updates from gods,” he said.
In just about a week, the viewership burgeoned to hundreds, then thousands came on board.
“More than 50,000 are watching every day. We are getting professionals to act in the Ramlila. We have a team of 10 people who are dedicated to make this online Ramlila a hit,” Piyush Agarwal, who is in charge of the technical team, said. “Because of facebook we got connected to 6,000 youth.”
Arjun Singh was already recieving calls from people in Pakistan, Canada, USA thanking him for the live telecast of Ramlila. He was happy. Maybe next year, they'd do more. The empty stalls at the Red Fort grounds didn't dampen his spirits. Server problems were proof that virtual stalls were full of the faithful and the curious. It was all god's grace, he said.
It took a few strokes of the brush, and greasy Camlin Oil Colour, to transform the mortal into the God he was to play. They were still using the old techniques. Black oil colour was best to paint moustaches, and dye eyebrows. This was in epic proportions, a morality play of good over evil, the characters had to be "done up" likewise.
The “godliness” had to be applied carefully, keeping in tandem with the changing times. Now, it is more “Bollywood” with glittering, shimmering eyes, defined lips, highlighted cheekbones. Sita looks uber cool in her matted makeup, her lips painted bronze.
To keep up with the times, the Lav Kush Ramlila Committee has expanded its space and it is not just the sprawling grounds of the Red Fort that it occupies, but virtual space too. Live telecast through a separate server so the net is cast far and wide, across the seas and mountains, and quite a following on the social networking site
www.facebook.com are how the organizing members of the committee, one of the oldest in the country and established in 1979 in Delhi, ensured the tradition survives. Such traditions can’t be in isolation. They must be integrated with the technology for survival, the members said.
The website, www.lavkush.com, where the live telecast of the epic in 11 parts is being played, has registered more than 6 lakh hits already. On www.facebook.com, there are upwards of 6,000 members who “like” the group.
It is not just the Lav Kush Ramlila Committee that’s into harnessing technology and the worldwide web for expanding its reach to millions of youngsters and others elsewhere in the world, who can’t be present in the stalls to watch the actors playing their parts in the centuries old epic, but hundreds of other such organizations too that are increasingly becoming tech-savvy to ensure the continuity of a tradition that many feel could well become extinct if not promoted on the virtual space. After all, Ramlila isn’t just about tradition but also about one’s moral duty towards faith and its survival despite the distractions of the modern world, members said.
On its facebook page, discussions are on in full swing.
One Sukhbir Soni wrote “I am very happy to see The great Indian role history on line Thanks.” Others too expressed their gratefulness online. This tryst with online Ramlila was way too cool.
This online approach was inclusive, it was all-encompassing. This is where physicals, externals melted and only spiritual remained.
For years, the traditional art form demanded the actors stuck to the morality play rules, apply makeup that also reflected the good or evil in them for this was Ramayan, and not Mahabharat where the hero was a tragic one with redeeming qualities. Here, it was clearly good and evil.
But as with the online crossover, adoption, adaption, other cosmetic changes too have changed the art form. Previously, there were seasoned actors whose faith made them join the moving committees from small towns in India. They traveled, dedicated their lives to the service of Lord Ram, and brought the God to the masses. Now, there are management students, athletes, professionals who feel being part of the committee may give them a break in Bollywood, or bring them closer to faith that
they are so out of sync with.
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