From B-town celebs’ participation, to a 100-feet lED screen for graphic effects, Ram-leela committees step it up this time. By Rupinder Kaur
It was still a bit early to go witness a Ram-leela at the ground right in front of the majestic lal Quila. It’s not even the weekend and we are greeted by the hustle and bustle of locals and tourists. A half-a-kilometer walk later, the advertisement hoardings, ranging from kulfi-wallahs to jewellers, welcome us. We enter a pandal where a few catch forty winks while others lounge on sofas tapping on their phone screens as the pedestal fans provide the much needed gush of semi-cool air. After a quick glace around and a few minutes of enquiring, we head out and enter the premises of luv Kush Ramlila Committee. Their star cast of actors like Shakti Kapoor, Asrani, Manoj Tiwari, Dolly Bindra, et al. look a bit clumsy in their photoshopped avatars on hoarding all around.
“Our committee has been doing Ram-leela’s since 1987. Our dream has been to organise the biggest Ram-leela and to some extent we feel we've accomplished that. For this year’s event, we started the preparations a year back thinking that we want to do something different. It is for the first time that we have a start cast. Earlier, the Bollywood stars would come to watch the shows,” explained committee president Ashok Agarwal.
We were interrupted by a quick phone call where Agarwal exchanges flight details about Bhojpuri actor Ravi Kishan. “He’s playing the character of Bharat, Manoj Tiwari is playing Kevat while funnywoman Upasana Singh is Kaikeyi,” Agarwal listed out some more names.
It must’ve been quite a task to get so many celebs on board for the project, we ask. “In the initial days, we went to meet many artistes but no one was willing to join us. We again went to Mumbai and hired a senior to arrange the meetings with them. We explained to them what we were planning on working with, et al., and then got a positive response. Once one artiste agreed, the others said yes too. Now, a few artistes are approaching us for roles,” quipped Agarwal. The scripts were also handed out to veteran actors like Raza Murad (Ahiravan) who “took his time to go through and got back after at least 15 days of reading and researching.”
“It is easy to work with them since they have already been trained in theatre and are experienced. The other day when Asrani ji (Narad) was on stage, it felt as if we were watching a film. Even Puneet Issar’s (Parashurama) performance was so powerful that when his voice echoes, even the stage vibrates a little. There are no re-takes here, no goof ups since they are all so good,” he added.
The star factor draws large crowds every day, he shared. “At times, you can’t even move around.”
The scripts have been tweaked a bit by changing the use of language, we were told. “Years ago, Sanskrit was predominantly used during Ram-leela but now we use shudh Hindi and also a bit of English and colloquial Hindi. There is a very popular dialogue by actor Shakti Kapoor in one of his films where he played the villain. Here, too, he’s playing the villain so we picked that dialogue and tweaked it a bit so the audience is also intrigued,” Agarwal said.
He believes that soon Ram-leela will be held in English. “Around ten per cent of the words in our script are in English, next time it might be around 20. If we don’t make the changes and make it more colloquial then the future generations might not be able to connect. Our target is the youth,” he signed-off.