Ramayan: When Ram and Sita were photobombed by Laxman, Bharat, Shatrughan in this throwback pic

Throwback photos from the time when Ramayan was shot have become Twitter gold. Sample the latest one...

Doordarshan is revisiting its past glory in the times of coronavirus crisis as it telecasts its iconic series Ramayan and Mahabharat to help people tide over the lockdown. The social media generation has also found its latest fix in the Indian epics and the trivia involved with it.

As Arun Govil and Dipika Chikhalia sit with Ramanand Sagar, guess who they were photobombed by!

The show’s Sita, Dipika Chikhlia, often shares throwback photos and details about Ramayan which often catch the fancy of Twitter. This weekend, Dipika shared a behind-the-scenes photo where Ramayan’s creator Ramanand Sagar is sitting with her and Arun Govil, who played Ram, and explaining something.

“Behind the camera ....#sagarworld@sagarworld@shivsagarchopra #RamayanOnDDNational #ramayanworld@Doordarshannational @ValmikiRamayan,” wrote Dipika. The photo soon went viral but not for the expected reasons. It was the trio of Laxman, Bharat and Shatrughan (played by ) who were seen standing at the back and interested in what the trio was discussing. The three princes were soon assumed to be photobombing the picture.

“Lakshman, bharat, Shatrughan having conversation.... lagta hai naye serial ki casting shuru kar di hai Sagar sahab ne,” wrote one while another said, “And just look behind the scene. Laxman bharat shatrughna expression who are watching from behind.”

Ramayan and Mahabharat helped bolster television audience and advertising revenues during the Covid-19 lockdown, the Broadcast Audience Research Council recently said. Overall, the council reported a 40% growth in TV viewership over the pre-coronavirus period, with 1.24 trillion minutes of TV content being consumed for the April 11-17 period. Nearly half of India watches TV daily as compared to 32% before, they said.

TV viewership has been growing consistently ever since the country was put under a lockdown on March 25, as people consumed more of news and movies. Launch of the mythological serials by public broadcaster Doordarshan probably to keep users engaged during the gloomy times gave a strong push to viewership for the last three weeks.

“Mythological shows have become the main source of entertainment among the Hindi general entertainment channels (GEC),” the Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) said, adding that such shows contribute a whopping 43 per cent of the total Hindi GEC genre, which is the biggest category of TV channels.