Why the Ram dance-drama endures, 68 yrs on

Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra’s distillation of Tulsidas’s epic has turned performance into pilgrimage

- VEENU SANDHU

Ravan is late. He has just returned from Durga Puja, and the revelry has delayed him. In his makeshift dressing room, bare-torsoed, he begins to transform. With deliberate strokes, he paints thick black eyebrows that stretch like bows across his forehead, half-covering it.

This isn’t the first time Ravan has been late. Years ago, it was Delhi’s traffic that kept another Ravan from the stage. That evening, the actor who now plays Ram had to step in as Ravan — and he did so with such conviction that the audience never knew the difference.

That is the resilience of Ram, the dance-drama produced annually by Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra since 1957. Returning every autumn with Shardiya Navratri, the production — now in its 68th year — is both ritual and performance. A two-and-a-half-hour spectacle distilled from Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, it has continued uninterrupted through political upheavals, logistical snags, and even a pandemic. “Even during Covid, we did not stop,” says Kamaljeet Kaur, principal of ShriRam. “We staged the show with strict safety protocols, cutting down seating from 700 to 200 and ensuring six feet between each person.”

From Ram’s birth in Ayodhya to his coronation, the play unfolds seamlessly. Music flows into music, one dance form glides into another, and not a second is wasted. Bharatanatyam, Kathakali, Kathak, Mayurbhanj Chhau, Kalariyapattu, and North Indian folk traditions all find a place here, set to original Hindustani classical compositions.

The production was conceived by Sumitra Charat’ Ram, daughter-in-law of industrialist Lala Shri Ram, founder of the DCM empire, at the behest of Jawaharlal Nehru. With it, the lawns of the Kala Kendra became an annual pilgrimage ground. Sumitra Charat Ram’s daughter, Padma Shri Shobha Deepak Singh, who has directed the play for decades, continues that vision, blending fidelity to tradition with practical reinvention.