Ramayan@256kbps

Over the 10 days of Dussehra,Singh claims,over 6 lakh people watched the play online at lavkush.com. “Hi-tech Ramlila is the only way we can connect with people across the globe. I was surprised that they were watching our Ramlila even in South Korea,” says Singh,an official of the Lav Kush Ramlila Committee,that organises one of the oldest Ramlilas in the capital.

“More than 50,000 people were watching us every day. We had a team of 10 people who worked to make this online Ramlila a hit,” says Piyush Agarwal,who was in charge of the technical team. “We connected with a lot of youngsters on Facebook as well.”

After a failed attempt to take Ramlila online last year,this time the Ramlila Committee invested Rs 10 lakh in streaming it. Their Facebook page has over 6,000 friends.

Other Ramlilas,like the Nav Shree Dharmik Leela Committee in Delhi,have also decided to integrate technology with spirituality and got accounts on Twitter,Orkut and Facebook.

On the Facebook page of Luv Kush Ramlila,many have clicked “Like”. One Sukhbir Soni comments: “I am very happy to see the great Indian story online.” Another cheekily writes in: “We like updates from gods.”

Not all of the online devotees were won over. The server crashed often. Others said they had problems with the buffering. Someone in Bhopal who tried to watch the battle between Ram and Ravan complained that the arrows stalled midair and Hanuman froze in his flight.

Arjun Kumar Singh is already receiving calls from people in Canada and the US,thanking him for the live telecast of Ramlila. He is happy. Maybe next year,they will do more. The empty stalls on the Red Fort grounds haven’t dampened his spirits. Server problems have been proof,he says,that the virtual stalls were full of the faithful and the curious.

“It’s all by god’s grace,” he says.