The Ram Lila

During our stay in India we have visited many amazing places, however, we have almost always avoided the normal tourist plan, choosing instead to pursue more unusual activities and to visit less frequented sites. Yet on the morning of our third day in Varanasi, we did what every foreign visitor to the city does; woke before dawn, made our way down to the Ganga and boarded a small wooden rowboat.

After we were all in and seated, one of our boatmen slowly pushed us out of the mud and muck near the shore and out into the river, while the other began to slowly row downstream. As the boat gathered speed and we moved further and further from the shore we were presented with an absolutely stunning view. On one side of the boat we observed the sun, a deep orange ball, rising slowly above the trees and reflecting, in a blinding fashion, off the surface of the water. On the other side of the boat, however, we observed something even more beautiful in the hectic jumble of the ghats, or stairs down to the water, the beautiful palaces and temples along the river, and the colorful throngs of bathers performing puja or simply just swimming in the early morning light.
For a while I didn’t mind being a tourist, the view of the ghats in the morning really is too good to miss, but after to boat turned around and we began to make our way back the magic began to wear off. Peddlers paddled over to our boat and tried to sell us their wares, the sun got higher in the sky and it started to get hot, and I noticed the tens of other small boats around us all filled with tourists like us, pointing and taking pictures of the bathers. I began to feel Western and disappointed and I wished for a more personal way to connect with the Ganga, the mother of our new home.

Luckily, that very night we had our chance to escape from the tourist routine and do something entirely different. That night we decided to go to the Ram Lila, the annual thousand year old play that tells the story of the Hindu text The Ramayana. As it was getting dark, we returned to the Ganga and for the second time boarded a boat. This time, however, we were not going to be voyaging along the river for the view, instead we were simply going straight across the river to Ram Nagar, the old fort of the Kings of Banaras, from where we would head inland to the site of the festival. As we traveled, we listened to Krishna, one of our guest lecturers and the man who suggested the trip, as he told us the history of the festival and the story of The Ramayana. Eventually, we reached massive and ancient fort and disembarked, leaving behind the serenity of the river for the chaos of an autorickshaw ride.

After weaving our way through the massive crowds on the streets, we reached our destination, a small series of temples and a massive open field. We made our way across the field to the lanterns and wooden poles of the stage, laid out or newspaper on the dirt beneath us, bought peanuts and fans, it was incredibly hot, from vendors behind us and settled down in our spots. As we sat we learned that the show had not yet started because the King of Banaras (who retains the title, but no real power, except to organize this very festival, which he watched from afar on his elephant) had been doing puja and had only just arrived.

When the play began, we all quickly realized that it was quite unlike anything we had seen before. First, we learned that all of the roles are played by children, selected by a complicated and mysterious process, and that to be chosen as an actor is incredibly prestigious because the devout believe that during the show the gods actually enter the bodies of the children who are portraying them. Next, we learned that the children are not trained in acting, they are read the lines by other people on stage and then repeat them, and that audience participation, such as yelling cheers, correcting the actors (many people bring their own copies of The Ramayana with them), and running on stage to help the actors during important scenes, is an essential component of the festival. Eventually we simply accepted the crazy style of the play, relaxed and began to watch the actors performing the dramatic swordfights, as if they were training to be stuntman in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and fire blowing that were all part of that nights section of the play, the fight between Lord Ram, the hero, and the demon Ravanna.

Though the play was quite fascinating, the part of the evening that I enjoyed the most was the fact that out of the thousands of people sitting in the field, we were the only foreigners. We were observing a thousand year old tradition that almost no other traveler in India ever sees and as if this wasn’t good enough, we were warmly greeted by the people around us, some of whom went out of their way to make friends. The man sitting behind me was particularly friendly and insisted on fanning me, thus saving me from sweating to death, throughout the whole performance. Though this made me feel awkward at first, eventually I turned around and we began to converse as he spoke broken English to me and I spoke broken Hindi back to him until we were both smiling and sharing my bag of peanuts.

When the performance finished, we slowly made our way back through the crowd to the chaotic streets and from there back to the banks of the Ganga. We boarded our boat and sailed out across the cool water into the warm, dark night, discussing what we had seen and simply enjoying the silence and calm that had been missing during our morning trip. It had been nice to be a tourist for a while, but it was now much better to be something else.