{"id":190,"date":"2009-10-03T20:53:38","date_gmt":"2009-10-03T20:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/?p=190"},"modified":"2010-01-01T08:36:23","modified_gmt":"2010-01-01T08:36:23","slug":"interview-with-pundit-ravi-maraj-his-involvemnt-with-ramleela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/?p=190","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Pundit Ravi Maraj – His involvemnt with Ramleela"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pundit<\/a><\/p>\n

Pundit Ravi Maraj is a Mc Bean resident by birth and has been involved with the Ramleela celebrations for approximately 20 years, not only in narrating the entire play, but also helping various communities develop their Ramleela. A gifted and engaging storyteller, he sat down with Triniview.com to share his perspective on the Ramleela celebration.<\/em>
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\nTRINIVIEW.COM:<\/b> Tell us some more about organizing the Ramleela here locally. What has that been like? <\/p>\n

PUNDIT RAVI MARAJ:<\/b> Organization is based upon community voluntary effort. What we have, it is a seasonal thing. It comes once per year in the month of October and when that time comes around you find that people know that it is Ramleela time. We have meetings, we start discussing what we are going to do and we start the project. You will find that we have a lot of voluntary effort taking place. It involves players, rehearsals, discussions, meetings and so on. It involves the people with the costuming, making props and the people who actually prepare the infrastructure of the place and so on. So all of that in one is a community based effort. It is a project which is time consuming. It also involves being able to have choreography before the actual play starts so you find that we have discussions based upon how we are going to portray certain scenes, characterization in terms of what characters they are going to be portraying to be able to bring those characters to life. Like for instance a saint or a sage in the forested region: how we should dress, how we should walk, what garbs he should wear, how he should project himself, what auspicious marking in order for the viewing public to be able to identify well this is a sage in the forested region. So those are the basic things that are involved. I would like to say it is really a project where people volunteer their services and people who come and indicate their interest in order to be able to get the whole project going. <\/p>\n

TRINIVIEW.COM:<\/b> What lessons do you think people could learn from this whole story? <\/p>\n

PUNDIT RAVI MARAJ:<\/b> I think many, many lessons. In each act, in each episode, there are many rich morals and values to come out of it. For instance, the issue with the saintly lady who was considered at one time to be a social outcast because she was living on the fringes of society. In those days women occupied low positions in society and because of that she wasn\u2019t favoured by the Rishis where she was staying in the temple and so she had to take a back stage. Because of the fact that she had this true love and devotion in her, she was favored; the lord singled her out. So it goes to show that the lord is not interested in position. He is not interested in status, he is not interested in power or how educated you are or how certified you are. What he is interested in is the love that generates in your heart. So that is one of the lessons that came out of it. <\/p>\n

There is also the episode where there was this lady called Ahilya who was transformed into a stone by her husband. He cursed her because he thought that she was unfaithful and when Sri Ram was passing in the forest he just touched her with his feet and she came back a human being. When she came back a human being her husband came back and he accepted her.<\/p>\n

So it shows that no matter how negative or how a way of life that you might be in\u2026 down and so on, it doesn\u2019t mean that you will always stay down. Once you have that firm faith and belief, you will always be able to rise above it. It also shows that even though the lord who manifested himself as an average human being, he had to also go through the trials and tribulations. He had to go through separation from his family. As a young person he had to leave and go into the forested region. He had to encounter all of these demons and so on. He had to be separated from his wife Sita. So it shows that the standard or the example that he was setting for us as average human beings is that we too in our lives will encounter problems. We too in day to day living will have all sorts of problems but the important thing is not to stay down. Get up and go and you will be successful, a positive kind of vibration, positive thinking. <\/p>\n

TRINIVIEW.COM:<\/b> Can you give us a little more information about yourself? <\/p>\n

PUNDIT RAVI MARAJ:<\/b> I come from a lineage of pundits. My grandfather was a pundit, my great grandfather; my father was a pundit and I have cousins and so on who are pundits. So I come from a lineage of people who actually were in this field of preaching and so on. So delving into the scriptures is not something new to me or something just acquired. It was indoctrinated to me from a very early age so you find that I am very much interested and influenced by my early formative years of being associated with that. And that is how I became involved into it and that is why I am involved with it, because of my family tradition. <\/p>\n

I am also a government worker. I attended university and I also did some courses and so on. All in all, my interest is really in culture. I am living that kind of a life and I enjoy it. It is voluntary and sometimes it is taxing and sometimes it is difficult. But the rewards and the benefits of being able to do service to society and being able to transform peoples lives is much more enriching and rewarding to me than monetary value. So you will see that I will come here night after night, spend hours here and I enjoy it. I enjoy working with the young people. I enjoy having dialogues with them, communicating with them, trying to enrich their lives so that when they grow up to be young men and young women and they go into their own homes and they have their own families they must be able to say, \u201cAt one time in my life I portrayed these great characters.\u201d These are the ideals and somewhere along the line in their subconscious minds some of those ideals would be able to come out. Maybe it might be dormant for some time but when it is activated, when it is demonstrated, then their lives become fulfilled and enriched and I will be happy because I was able to assist them in their development.
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\nTRINIVIEW.COM:<\/b> Are you from Mc Bean? <\/p>\n

PUNDIT RAVI MARAJ:<\/b> Actually, I was born in Mc Bean. My mother is from Mc Bean. I spent some years in Mc Bean but I am not residing in Mc Bean anymore. It is like my home place. I have formed this affection with the place because of my birth and because of my family, some of whom are still living here in Mc Bean, so I have that love for the Mc Bean people and I love working with them. It is trying at times but I have that affinity and I have that love so you find that I will come back year after year and work with them although I have had many other offers to work in communities. <\/p>\n

I have been into this Ramleela business I would say about twenty years now. Not only here but I have done it in many other areas. The work that I do is basically to go into communities, assist the communities in setting up the infrastructure in Ramleela and when I feel that they are sound enough and able enough to take it on their own then I give them the opportunity to let them mushroom and develop it. Then I go to another village to say, \u201cLet me help you all,\u201d and let my work continue. So that is more or less the kind of work that I am involved in. <\/p>\n

People who are interested in Ramleela presentations are doing a course right now. I am part of that course which is being run by the Ministry of Culture to prepare people who are involved in Ramleela in order to enhance their skills. We have things like costuming, dance choreography and the history of the Ramleela. We have had the history of the Ramleelas from all over the world and we have had facilitators from India and facilitators from Trinidad who had gone to India to study. It is a whole holistic approach to the Ramleela that the government now is trying through the Ministry of Culture to assist Ramleela presenters. So I believe with that in mind, we will be able to improve. <\/p>\n

But funding as I say remains one of the most critical areas that needs to be addressed. If the government can give us funds then so much more can be developed. We will be able to have professional people doing the training, professional musicians. We would like to incorporate dance groups into the Ramleela. Every scene or every act which we can incorporate the dance segment will enhance the whole play. So I see a lot more development but we need to get the funding in order to get the people properly trained. <\/p>\n

Another aspect I see that is taking too long to develop is that we want the players themselves to be able to adlib; not only to mime and not only for the narrator to say what is going on. We want them to actually have a one to one communication with the audience. Talk, have that dialogue rather than the narrator saying everything and they are just acting there. We want them to go live on the air so that it brings out a presence on the spot, a one to one communication, and they will be able now to dramatize a little bit more when they are able to say the lines. That is not happening, it is taking too long and we need professional help. I alone cannot do it. It is a big project. <\/p>\n

TRINIVIEW.COM:<\/b> There seems to be a lot of inputs that flow into the Ramleela. You have the dancers and you have the musicians and so on. <\/p>\n

PUNDIT RAVI MARAJ:<\/b> We also have a lot of behind the scenes people who are involved with the Ramleela. What is taking place now is that we have incorporated people who are Carnival wire benders; Carnival people who are involved in making costumes for Carnival. We have a few costumes here which have been built by people who are involved with the wire bending and so on. So we have not only incorporated our people, we have external factors involved into the Ramleela presentation. We want to incorporate background music so we want to have people who are engineers involved into the Ramleela so that while the play is going on we can get the mood with the background music. But that is not happening as it should. <\/p>\n

If we have professional help, professional people, we take the play, we script it from day to day, from Act one to Act two and we look at the mood, we look at the whole picture of the Ramleela and present the background music to get the flavour, to get the music, to get everything meshing together so that the viewing audience would be able to have the feel of the Ramleela when they hear the music and see the acting, the costuming and so on depicting the scene. There is much work to be done. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if in my time all of that can take place but I will certainly like to see it taking place. I was the most instrumental person in changing the time segment of the Ramleela. Prior to my time, the Ramleela used to be done from 4 p.m to 6 p.m. Just when it was getting dark the Ramleela was ending. Through my vision, I decided that I was going to change the time slotted to suit the society because what we had was people hustling, coming from work because of traffic and all sorts of things. They were just coming together in a hurried form, not prepared mentally and so on to come and take part or even to view. I decided in 1993 or 1994, somewhere around there, that I was going to change the time. And when I changed the time from four in the evening to 6 p.m. to seven in the night to 9 p.m. I got a lot of problems with the elders in society. They were asking me, \u201cYou are a young person into this Ramleela business and you have now changed the times. What are you doing? Why are you doing that?\u201d <\/p>\n

Tradition dictates that we stick to a particular time and I started to explain to them the reason, the rationale for it. I still got some resistance but do you now what is happening now? Because of my initial thrust, Ramleela all over Trinidad is taking place from 7 p.m. onwards. So I was the pioneer and the forerunner to it and I am so happy about that development. If you rationalize it, it is cooler and people are more prepared to come. They can take their time and not rush from work. Also, the costuming under the lights is much more effective than during the day. <\/p>\n

TRINIVIEW.COM:<\/b> Do you have any last words you would like to say to the national community? <\/p>\n

PUNDIT RAVI MARAJ:<\/b> I would like them to come out and support Ramleela. Those of you who are interested come out and take part. See what it is, enjoy it and learn from it. Transform your lives. The lessons are there. You just have to take it, implement it and make yourself a better person. <\/p>\n

Also Read:<\/b><\/p>\n

Mc Bean Ramleela and Cultural Group celebrates Ramleela<\/a><\/p>\n

The Ramleela Celebration Told by Pundit Ravi Maraj<\/a><\/p>\n

Ramleela (Ramdilla) Festival in Mc Bean Village, Couva 2009 in pictures<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pundit Ravi Maraj is a Mc Bean resident by birth and has been involved with the Ramleela celebrations for approximately 20 years, not only in narrating the entire play, but also helping various communities develop their Ramleela. A gifted and engaging storyteller, he sat down with Triniview.com to share his perspective on the Ramleela celebration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[73,69,21,3,1],"tags":[62,64,33,63,61],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":288,"href":"https:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions\/288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.triniview.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}