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Sacred Prime Time The all new Ram darbar

The serial that used to bring India to a halt in the late 1980s is back in a new avatar. Again produced by Sagar Arts, “Ramayan” is going to be the flagship show of the new channel NDTV Imagine to be launched on January 21. The epic is in the form of a daily soap and will be telecast during prime time. “The whole idea is to cut through the clutter. We can’t attract viewership for a new channel with yet another saas-bahu tale,” says Sameer Nair, CEO, NDTV Imagine.

So religion is the only way? “We are not looking at it as a mythological serial. For us it is a story, which has the highest mass appeal and the ability to bring the whole family together. The point is though the number of television homes has increased from around six million in 1987 to 118 million homes, most of the these homes are still single television homes. Also 560 million Indians are below the age of 25. So a whole generation has missed out on the televised form of the epic.

Anand Sagar, who is directing the new Ramayan, promises the series is being shot on an epic scale. Anand, who assisted his father, the late Ramanand Sagar on the first version, says television budgets have increased in the last few years. “Today we can afford to use high quality animation and opulent sets.”

Anand says research has been done to understand the architecture of the period and Omung Kumar (of Saawariya fame) has designed the sets accordingly. “However, we have made sure that the opulence doesn’t come in the way of the simplicity and honesty of the story,” says Shakti Sagar.

Talking of the contemporary touch, Anand reflects, “For today’s audience we are presenting Ram more as a human being and less as a god.” Echoing the sentiment producer Prem Sagar“Ram was the ideal son, ideal husband and ideal human being.”

Ideal husband? Many in present generation might question the ideals of a man who abandoned his wife after agnipariksha on hearsay. Says Prem. “We didn’t show the episode in the first version. It was only after people’s protest that we were forced to show Uttara Ramayan”. Anand says he is not sure whether he will show the episode this time.

For people who still know Arun Govil and Deepika Chikalia as Ram and Sita, now the characters will be essayed by newcomers. Gurmeet Choudhary plays Lord Ram, while Debina Bonnerjee plays Sita. The three key characters – Lakshman, Bharat and Shatrughan – will be played by Ankit Arora, Vije Bhatia and Lalit Negi, respectively. Another connecting link is the musical score of Ravindra Jain. “I have kept the soul of the original intact, just the words have been changed. Suresh Wadkar and Kavita Krishnamurthy have sung the title track. The effort is to show Ram as an emotional man,” says Jain. The serial is coming when the Ram setu controversy is on a high and a section is questioning the existence of Ram. Prem says they are creative people and have nothing to do with what the politicians are upto. “We are largely following Tulsi’s ‘Ramcharitmanas’ and Ram setu is very much there.” A master with words Jain plays it down. “To me Ram setu means Ram se tu (you are because of Ram) and not the other way round.”

ANUJ KUMAR

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