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Sacred Prime Time The all new Ram Darbar of “Ramayan”, starting on NDTV Imagine from January 21

The channel is virtually putting a cat among pigeons as the slot is replete with saas-bahu serials.

“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.

“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, which teaches us to care, share and be charitable – values that we are fast losing out in the name of progress.”

Anand Sagar, who directs the new Ramayan, promises the series is being shot on an epic scale.

“Today, we can afford to use high quality animation and opulent sets to bring the epic alive for a new generation. Like Varun devta coming out of water.”

A visit to the Sagar Film City in Vadodara shows how the Sagars are leaving no stone unturned to recreate the era in the 40 acre facility.

Sources say six crores have already been spent. 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, who represents the third generation of Sagars and has worked with the research team.

Anand says, “For today’s audience we are presenting Ram more as a human being and less as a god.”

Arun Govil and Deepika Chikalia who played Ram and Sita are now replaced 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.

But for now all of them have been kept under wraps.

Again with the younger audience in mind the new Ram is more muscular and Sita much more curvaceous.

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 up to. “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.”

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