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 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 after. 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 over the past three years, is exultant about his elevation to lead status. “I have read Ram Charitmanas several times and particularly liked the ‘kirdar’ of Rama,” he declaims in true thespian style. 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 makeup is loud and the costumes even louder at the dress rehearsal on the BKT gram sabha land, 20 km from Lucknow.

TESTING TIMES ‘An artiste first, religion later’
Lucknow:

The Ramlila cast, which comprises mostly young Muslim youth from Bakshi Ka Talaab village, provide a soothing balm to nerves shredded by the Delhi, Gujarat and Malegaon blasts and their reverberations in nearby Azamgarh. “All that blood and gore and mutilated bodies shown on TV seems like part of a different world,’’ says 75-year-old 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. “Aam admi kyon, khas admi kyon nahin (how come always the poor, why not the rich)?’’ he asks.

Known as the mandir wale baba, Ahmad has been crafting wood/ plywood temples for Hindu homes for more than 30 years. Initially, some accused him of blasphemy. Ahmad’s response was simple and steadfast: He was an artiste first and Muslim later. “Now, the entire lane of carpenters — all Muslims — have turned into mandir makers,’’ Ahmad says with a chuckle. As for terrorists, he says they are bound to fail because “our people are too secular’’.

Ahmad’s eyes grow moist as he recalls how at every Ramlila performance, audience members fold their hands in supplication and mutter prayers — some even weep copiously — when Lord Rama is exiled. “At such moments, no one is bothered that the man portraying Lord Rama is a Muslim by birth,’’ he points out.