144. performance
sure they never enjoyed when confined to cinema halls—but at least one effect was
to jolt the officials in Mandi House (Doordarshan’s New Delhi headquarters) into
the realization that they were in danger of losing their audience, and with it revenues
from private sponsorship, unless they were prepared to offer programs that could
compete more successfully with the fantasies of the cinema.
The first such effort was Kumar Vasudev’s Ham Log (Us), a soap opera about a
group of families in a middle-class neighborhood. In place of the larger-than-life
heroes of the cinema, it introduced a set of believable characters with whom view-
ers were invited to identify. The runaway success of this fledgling effort prompted
the network to commission a whole crop of serials and miniseries, of which the most
popular were Buniyaad (Foundation, a melodramatic family saga directed by
Ramesh Sippy) and Nukkad (Street Corner). Though official parlance blessed such
efforts with the newly coined Sanskritic genre name dharavahik (serialization), the
Hinglish word siriyal effortlessly entered popular speech. By any name, serials had
come to stay, and during the mid-1980s more than a dozen were airing during any
given week. The relative popularity of each was reflected in viewer polls, advertis-
ing rates, and the eagerness with which sponsors sought ten-second slots in the
blocks of commercials preceding each episode. A new industry was created, em-
ploying directors and technicians as well as many stage and cinema actors.
With the rapid proliferation of serials and the liberalization of bureaucratic poli-
cies on programming, the subject matter of shows began to display more imagina-
tion and diversity. During 1986 two miniseries aired that drew on folklore and
mythology: Vikram aur Vetal (King Vikram and the Vampire, based on the folktales
preserved in the Sanskrit Kathasaritasagara and in Hindi-Urdu kissatexts) and
Krishna Avatar (Lord Krishna, loosely based on the Bhagavata Purana). Although
both were well received by viewers, neither enjoyed enough success to eclipse the
popularity of established serials like Buniyaad, nor did the religious content of the
Krishna series provoke much controversy.
The creator of Vikram aur Vetal was Ramanand Sagar (born Ramchand
Chopra), a veteran producer-director who, together with his five sons, ran a pro-
duction company responsible for several hit films, including the high-grossing mu-
sical Arzoo (Desire) and the espionage thriller Aankhen (Eyes)—but never, inci-
dentally, a mythological. Sagar’s Natraj Studios fell on lean times in the late 1970s
after a string of failures, prompting the director to turn his attention to television.
While producing a second miniseries entitled Dada-didi ki Kahaniyan (Grandpa and
Grandma’s Stories), Sagar approached Doordarshan officials with a proposal for an
extended serialization of the Ramayana. By his own account a lifelong devotee of