For the first time, Prayagraj citizens are watching and enjoying Ramlila during the auspicious nine days of Chaitra Navratri. This is the traditional Ramlila, in which dialogues are actually delivered by actors and not lip-synced to pre-recorded dialogues.
The aim of organising the Ramlila during Navratri is to give a fillip to the traditional Ramlila, which is in certain danger of extinction.
The Ramlila began in a grand procession of Lord Vishnu and Mahalakshmi from Bharadwaj Ashram on Friday. Following this, Ravan’s birth was depicted. Ramlila will now be held every day from 7pm to 10.30 pm.
Being staged by a team of artistes from Dharma Pracharak Ramkatha Mandal, Koraon, Pankaj Mishra, 24, is playing the role of Lord Ram, while Sanjay Pandey (22) is playing Laxman. Pandey is also a folk singer who can recite the complete Ram Charit Manas.
This Ramlila is being staged at Ramvatika and organised by the Katra Ramlila Committee. The committee’s president, Sunil Kumar Gupta, said that the Ramlila is being organised with the aim of patronising artistes acting in the traditional art form of Ramlila, now staged in rural areas only. All the artistes are male, who are being directed by Mahant Ravi Shankar Tiwari, an ace actor hailing from village Mehuli of Koraon development block of Prayagraj district.
“The artistes and the art form of staging this traditional form of Ramlila is getting extinct and there has to be a collective effort to make arrangements to bring it back into the mainstream,” said Gupta.
{{/usCountry}}“The artistes and the art form of staging this traditional form of Ramlila is getting extinct and there has to be a collective effort to make arrangements to bring it back into the mainstream,” said Gupta.
{{/usCountry}}“All members of my team are males and we play the female characters too by applying make-up. All of us have been playing our roles for the last eight years now. We have staged our Ramlila in different cities of UP along with states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand etc,” said Tiwari.
The modern form of Ramlila, in which Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan is played in the background and the artists just lip-sync the dialogues, has forced the traditional Ramlila towards extinction, he claimed.
“It is a noble thought of organisers like the Katra Ramlila Committee that we will be getting some recognition as our team does not charge anything and runs completely on donations,” Tiwari said.
Even the artistes are from various places like Koraon, Mirzapur, Sonbhadra, Jharkhand besides localities of Prayagraj, he added.