In its rerun, the rage television show of the 80s, “Ramayana”, seems to have again taken the Indian homes by storm.
The serial, put on rerun alongside Mahabharata, showcased on Doordarshan, has been an effort to provide entertainment to people in the distressing lockdown spell of Corona Virus. But probably nobody had estimated the kind of rapt viewership it would command across India.
As per data on April 16, 9 p.m Ramayana was watched by a staggering 77 million people in a single day. The first episode of the serial had crashed Doordarshan’s website and turned out to be the top-searched item on Google India. It was one of the top trending subjects on twitter.
Indeed, the social media platforms have been inundated by jokes, discussions, forums and memes on the popular serial. All the apprehension that the serial, first telecast between 1987-88 could find few viewers due to advancement on technology and computer graphics, as well as the changed profile of the viewers, have been proved to be misfounded.
The serial, produced by Ramanand Sagar, features Arun Govil, Deepika Chikhalia, Sunil Lahiri and Arvind Trivedi in respective roles of Ram, Sita, Laxman and Ravana.
