an open-air ramayana. 125
The large space of the Ramlila is extended to a semblance of infinity by the fact
that the “play” is set in the “real world.” Our stage embraces town, village, field, for-
est, lake. Our floor is the earth, and our roof is the sky, often awesome during the
moments of transition between day and night, in this season of transition between
the rains and autumn.
The sense of infinity is enhanced by the impossibility of ever seeing the entire
Lila. Though I had privileged status that enabled me to pass through any barrier,
there was no way I could see every part of the action in three years’ attendance.
Crowds, transportation failures, getting lost in the dark, being given the wrong di-
rections, falling back from fatigue or illness, becoming caught up in some interest-
ing conversation or observation, all prevented me from staying with the golden gods
every moment. Ordinary spectators may take many years even to hear all the dia-
logues once.
As there is no clear line between the “play” and the “world,” there is also none
between actors and audience. I have already indicated the many ways in which the
audience “acts.” Many of the actors also mingle with the audience. They may be
seen stepping into their costumes just before a scene, hiking from place to place with
their masks under their arms, watching the performance, or chatting. Similarly, the
special Ramlila time mingles with non-Lila time, as every performance is cut by an
hour’s break while the Maharaja goes to perform sandhya puja,or evening worship.
At that time the sadhuswith their kirtanbecome the star performers, the svarupsare
available for a kind of free-form darshan,and the Lila fades into the Mela or fair that
accompanies it and plays the role of the ordinary world in juxtaposition with the di-
vine Lila world. On the climactic night of Ravan’s final defeat (day twenty-five of
the Ramlila), the sandhyabreak lasts three hours, culminating when the huge paper
effigy of the demon-king is put to the torch. That night, on the far-extending field
of Lanka, the interpenetration of cosmos and samsara,Lila and Mela, is particularly
grand and powerful. The two do not blur or cancel each other out but fade into and
out of each other like figure and ground. The gods emerge from the field of the or-
dinary world; the ordinary world emerges from the field of cosmic forces. (See fig-
ures G and H at the Web site http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/vasu/loh.))
Here is a detailed description ofvijaya dashami,the “victorious tenth” day of the
waxing half of the lunar month of Ashvin, celebrated as the festival ofdafahra
throughout North India, as I observed it in 1976:
At the Lila ground, the atmosphere is electric. Things don’t move, they sweep.
The crowd sweeps around the raised oblong of earth that serves as a stage, the