124. performance
lice control and periods when control collapses and anarchy reigns, jostling that
sometimes pitches someone off the platform to sprawl on the ground below, while
the lotus-studded, lantern-decked canopy swings crazily on its bamboo frame as if
caught in an earthquake.
3:30 a.m.It is nearly two hours until arati,but the audience is pouring in, cram-
ming the huge yard from end to end and lining every inch of the surrounding
walls. I take a place close to the front.
Behind me a sea of tightly packed bodies is being subjected to constant pressure
by new throngs pushing in. As the stars pale and the event we have come for draws
near, roars rise from different parts of the space, but they are not cheers for God.
They indicate that some pressure has been exerted that was too much to bear, that
has lifted a while mass of bodies and shot it forward like a tidal wave.
Till the last moment my position seems safe. But when the Maharaja marches
to the front, a path cut for him by furious police, the whole sea breaks loose and
pitches forward, toppling barricades, rolled by its own terrific weight.
We are all one body. No one can hold her ground in that surge any more than a
drop can keep its position in the ocean. Throughout arati,as the lights blaze and
the gongs ring, we are caught in the sea, sometimes on our feet, sometimes nearly
on the ground with a blur of bodies over us, sometimes tilted at angles that would
be impossible if we weren’t at once pushing and supporting each other.
From time to time, over the boiling surface of the crowd, I catch a glimpse of
Ram’s face. He is still, radiant, and smiling.LILA
To be vigorously and devotedly involved in the Ramlila for one month is to take an
excursion out of ordinary space and time. The Ramcharitmanas,along with main-
stream devotional Hinduism, teaches that the universe is lila,or play, which in San-
skrit as in English means both “drama” and “game.” The idea oflilais closely akin
to that ofmaya,which we may say here refers to the transient and illusory world of
forms. I believe that the Ramlila is constructed in such a way as to produce an ac-
tual experience of the world as lilaor maya.^7
The participant not only sees the drama but finds himself acting in it. A vast
world is created before and around him. This world is built physically and psycho-
logically performance after performance. The devotee ’s days are curved around the
necessity of being there. Including transportation, attendance often takes seven
hours, sometimes more. The tawdry samsaraof ordinary life pales while the Ramlila
world becomes ever more vivid, brilliant, and gripping.