136. performance
the Lord of form, Ram with his dark skin, his bow and arrows, his long arms, his in-
comparable beauty. He prays to be forever devoted to that form, to be lost in love for
those lotus feet. If he ever thinks he has passed beyond it, he will lose not only the
beloved form, but the love that brought about and continues to effect his personal
transformation.
Yogis talk of supreme dispassion, but the devotees of Ram do not attain or as-
pire to such dispassion. Rather they attain it with regard to everything except
their Lord. Total love for Ram and hislilais a condition of their understanding.
Believing in a personality rather than in an abstraction, loving a play rather than
an idea, they run the risk of suffering when the forms of person and play are
withdrawn. But the poignancy of both love and suffering drives them to deeper
understanding.
On the thirty-first day of the Ramlila in 1976, a few minutes before the final arati,
I saw an old man who used to ride in the small boat I took going home from the per-
formances. He was pious and seemed somehow childlike to me; in the boat he sang
religious songs that others listened to affectionately. He had two trademarks: a bam-
boo fan that he always waved, and a cry that he uttered as greeting and comment,
as beginning and ending, as if it said everything. The cry was“O ram ki maya, bha-
gavan ki maya!”“Oh, the mayaof Ram, the mayaof God!”
Encountering him on the street before the lastarati,I smiled to hear the familiar
words and to see the fan winnowing the air. But there seemed to be something wrong.
He was staggering, and his voice was breaking. Then I saw that he was crying. Tears
fell down his face as he wailed something that I gradually began to make out: “It ’s
over, God ’s Lila is over. For a whole year we won’t see it. What will we do?”
His legs buckled under him, and a muscular young man helped to hold him up.
“Perhaps he has been drinking,” murmured an observer.
“He has not been drinking,” said another. “He is absorbed in God.”
Spontaneously the young man embraced the old one and lifted him off the
ground, shouting the victory cry of the Ramlila:“Bol raja ramchandra ki jai!”Oth-
ers echoed it.
“Someone take my hand and lead me away,” said the old man piteously. “It ’s
over, God ’s Lila is over.”
NOTES
I am grateful for the opportunity to publish this revised version of an article that origi-
nally appeared in 1983 in a European conference volume. I wish to express my deep ap-