ராம்லீலா நாடகத்தில் பக்தியுடன் நடிக்கும் முஸ்லிம் சகோதரர்கள்!

நன்றி: டைம்ஸ் ஆஃப் இந்தியா செய்தி

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/When_Rama_took_a_break_to_offer_namaz/articleshow/3553853.cms

When Rama took a break to offer namaz
3 Oct 2008, 1030 hrs IST, Manjari Mishra ,TNN

LUCKNOW: Masood Ahmad recalls the hush that fell when he went onstage to announce an unscheduled break during the raging battle between Lord Rama and Ravana, last Dussehra. The huge audience assembled at the Bakshi Ka Talaab ground was not amused. A few even began to boo, till the reason for the interruption was explained.

The Ramlila cast — including Rama, Ravana and Lakshman — Ahmad explained, needed to offer namaz and break roza . Not a single protest was heard thereafter. The show resumed only after the actors rolled up their prayer mats post-namaz and shared the iftari snacks — right on stage.

Masood Ahmad took over as manager of the BKT Ramlila Samiti from his father Muzaffar Hussain, who floated the outfit and also the concept of a mixed cast along with a Hindu friend in 1972. The move generated much curiosity and even a whisper campaign initially. But things have gradually settled down.

The casting coup of the year, says Ahmad, is the new Lord Rama — gawky 15-year-old Mohammad Sher Khan from BKT Higher Secondary School.

Khan, who’d been playing Bharat and Shatrughan for three years, is exultant about his elevation to lead status. ‘‘I have read Ramcharitmanas several times and particularly liked the ‘kirdar’ of Rama,” he declaims grandly. An unimpressed director, Sadiq Khan, exhorts the youngster, just back from school, to go over the script once more.

The stage props are garish, the make-up is loud and the costumes even louder at the dress rehearsal on B K T Gram Sabha land, 20 km from Lucknow. But they nevertheless serve as a soothing balm for nerves shredded by the Delhi, Gujarat and Malegaon blasts, and for the reverberations in nearby Azamgarh.

“All that blood and gore and the mutilated bodies shown on TV seem like part of a different world,’’ says 75-yearold Maqbool Ahmad, a carpenter from Nishatganj. Ahmad is still to get over the death of nine-year-old Santosh Yadav in the Mehrauli blast. He says, with a shudder, that the child could well have been his own grandson.