Ramanand Sagar was struggling with large-screen failures when Bhagwan Shri Ram showed him the way. Ramayan changed the Sagars’ lives. It’s not as if Ramanand Sagar had done no significant work before Ramayan. He had directed pathbreaking films like Paigham, Ghunghat, Zindagi, Aarzoo, Aankhen, Lalkaar and Geet.In fact, he started as the screenplay and dialogue writer of Raj Kapoor’s Barsaat in 1949. He had an impressive body of work in cinema that would have ensured a name for him in cinema history.
“Ramayan just happens once, it cannot be done again,” says Moti Sagar
But then at the end of his career he decided to change his destiny. One morning the patriarch of the Sagar family gathered the family members to make the announcement. Papaji, as he was lovingly called by everyone, said he was making the Ramayan. He said it was something he was born to do in life.
When Ramanand Sagar had fallen ill with tuberculosis, a face-reader had told him he would do something towards the end of his life that would change his destiny.
The entire Sagar family moved to Umbergaon in Gujarat to shoot Ramayan. Umbergaon became their home for the next two years.
Recalled Ramanand’s son Moti Sagar, “For two years we lived and breathed only the Ramayan. We did nothing else except sleep for a few hours. We shot for eighteen hours every day. We had the most dedicated team of technicians and actors. Arun Govil became Rama, Dipika became Sita, Arvind Trivedi was Ravan, and Dara Singhji was only Hauman in the public’s mind for the rest of his life and even today so many years after his death.”
Moti Sagar admitted he and the family were taken aback by the impact of Ramayan. “Wherever my father went, people touched his feet, treated him as someone who had brought God into their lives. You know, back then being religious and devout was not a compulsion. It was a voluntary and totally instinctive impulse. So, the impact of the Ramayan and the reverence it generated came from a place of complete sincerity. We all believed in the words and teachings of the Ramayan. I believe the series worked because it was born out of a complete faith in the source material. That faith connected with the audience,” he said.
Moti Sagar feels it would be impossible to do the same Ramayan in today’s times. “We made it under no pressure,” he said. “There was zero interference from Doordarshan. Later we tried doing something similar with other channels. But it didn’t work. There was too much interference. Something like Ramayan just happens once. It cannot be done again.”
Also Read: Moti Sagar, son of Ramayan TV show maker Ramanand Sagar, speaks about Adipurush, “Papaji could have made a feature with on it with top stars”
More Pages: Ramayan Box Office Collection
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