Days after Doordarshan started to telecast Ramanand Sagar’s 1987 television series Ramayan, actor Arun Govil, who played the lead role of ‘Lord Ram’, appealed to everyone to abide by the rules and follow PM Modi’s guideline in view of the Coronavirus outbreak.
Public broadcaster DD National took to the micro-blogging site, to share the reel life Lord Ram’s appeal to his fans. He has asked citizens to follow the lockdown orders with sanyam (patience) and sankalp (resolution), as also advised by the Prime Minister. He appealed to stay at home and follow all the guidelines laid down by Prime Minister Narendra Modi amidst the Coronavirus outbreak.
https://twitter.com/DDNational/status/1245019271421472768?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwArun Govil advised people to take all the necessary precautions, like regularly washing and sanitising hands, staying isolated and not coming in contact with a lot of people and following the social distancing advise, the key to keeping ourselves safe from contracting the infection.
In his 1.35 minutes video, Arun Govil assures citizens that if the guidelines laid by the government in followed en masse, then India will, within no time, overcome this pandemic.
Last week, Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting (IB) had informed that Ramanand Sagar’s iconic show based on Hindu Epic Ramayan will be retelecasted on DD National twice a day from March 28 in the wake of Wuhan coronavirus lockdown. One episode of the show will air in the morning between 9 am to 10 am while the other will be broadcast at night between 9 pm to 10 pm.
Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana was a 1987 television series that dramatised the great epic and was a massive hit at the time.
As the first episode of Ramayan went live on March 28, Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana on Doordarshan became the top search on Google in India with several people presumably either trying to find out what time the series would begin or trying to find an online link to watch the show.
Not only did Ramayan on Doordarshan become the top search on Google, the Doordarshan website where one could watch the channel live online crashed due to high traffic. Even on Social networking site Twitter, four trends in the top 10 trends pertained to Ramayan, Ramanand Sagar, Lord Ram and Doordarshan.
Growing up in the 80s and the 90s, one of the fondest memories is of watching Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan and B R Chopra’s Mahabharat on Doordarshan. The roads would go empty as the nation saw Arun Govil as Lord Ram and Nitish Bharadwaj as Lord Krishna. Now that the streets have gone empty again, thanks to the Chinese Wuhan Coronavirus, even in the age of Netflix and Amazon Prime, Ramayan and Mahabharat still capture the country’s interest.