Waiting for Rama

Now, when everyone is waiting for Lord Rama to return to Ayodhya to begin the Diwali celebrations, there are a few like me whom the Lord has...

Now, when everyone is waiting for Lord Rama to return to Ayodhya to begin the Diwali celebrations, there are a few like me whom the Lord has never visited. When I was little, Lord Rama meant Ramlila and that meant a great time 8212;popcorn,jalebis and an excuse to come home late at night.

Evenings were spent watching the important events of Rama8217;s life and the nights were reserved for plays depicting the lives of other mythological characters. The plays had their own charm and a characteristic sense of timing. When boredom started creeping in, some performer would invariably say, 8216;Nachanewali ko bulaya jaye call the female dancer.8217;

Then came a time when I had a close encounter with Rama. We were planning to stage a play on the life of Lord Buddha before he became a monk. It was to be the exclusive effort of the fifth standard students. What came from the school was only encouragement.

I was to play the role of Siddharth. To dress Siddharth in royal robes, one of my friends approached the local Ramlila committee. He used his 8216;clout8217; and was successful in getting the silky and expensive clothes of Rama and Laxman. Rama8217;s clothes for me, playing Siddharth, and Laxman8217;s for him, as Devdutt. Our production was staged during a youth festival. As soon as the play ended, I headed for a cricket match going on in an adjacent venue, completely forgetting to take off the royal robes.

All was well as long as I stood watching. The moment I sat, overcome by fatigue, someone swooped on me and thundered, 8216;Hey, don8217;t you know you are wearing Lord Rama8217;s clothes? You are showing disrespect to him. Stand up!8217;

If I had kept my wits about me, I may have blurted out something like,8216;Ma nishad pratishtham tvamgamah shashvati samah,8217; the inspirational verse that expressed Valmiki8217;s anger and brought him to Lord Rama. Instead, I cried.

A few years later, I almost got to play the part of Rama. A sanyasi had started living at the village temple, which was desperately short of a priest. In a short while, he had developed a good following. As a Rambhakt, he would punctuate every other sentence with a 8216;Ramji ki ichha se..by the wishes of Lord Rama.8217; He was pained that so many people around him were ignorant about Lord Rama. He therefore decided to initiate them into the intricacies of the Ramayana and floated the idea of staging a Ramlila during the Navratras, although we already had two such venues in the vicinity. But our sanyasi had big plans. 8216;We8217;ll probe the mythical characters and go into details often overlooked. No filmi songs. The children will play all the characters,8217; he decreed. It was to be a Ramlila with a difference.

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Alas, that difference was never to be known. The man, who had planned to play Ravana in the play, promptly fell out of grace by getting involved with a woman. The whole village streamed in to flush him out.

That was how Lord Rama eluded me yet again. Here8217;s hoping he visits me this Diwali but via Gujarat, Godhra and so many other places that8217;s a tough call.