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Film documents traditional Ramlila enacted by Muslims

Nestled in Uttar Pradesh's glass-factory district of Firozabad is Kheriya, a small village which for over 50 years now has been enacting the popular Ramlila with pomp and fervour.

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Nestled in Uttar Pradesh's glass-factory district of Firozabad is Kheriya, a small village which for over 50 years now has been enacting the popular Ramlila with pomp and fervour.

What makes it distinct is that Muslims form the majority of its cast, presenting an enduring and spectacular tapestry of communal harmony.

The Kheriya Ramlila, a fine example of the composite nature of the camaraderie between Hindus and Muslims, has been captured in a captivating manner in a 66-minute documentary produced by Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA).

Documented by Molly Kaushal from the art centre, the film, "Leela In Kheriya", offers a beautiful commentary on the concept of life and existence, with images of glass factories and smelting glass in its furnaces, borrowing them as metaphors for the concepts of creation and the relentlessly moving 'Wheel of Time'.

"The village of Kheriya has an almost equal percentage of Hindus and Muslims, and the tradition of enacting the Ramlila began, like most places in the country, in the 1970s.

"The village is very surrealistic as the people are comfortable with their identities, thus making it easy for them to speak the dialogues, laced with humour and satire, in an effortless manner," says Kaushal.

The director moves into the lanes and bylanes of Kheriya where the individual selves of the inhabitants and their daily grind are enmeshed in many ways with the quest for the sublime.

Through interviews and monologues, the film reveals the personal history of the inhabitants of the village, whose lives are filled with sorrow and dejection on one hand and hope, courage and indomitable sport on the other. "Each of their individual journeys converges on the Ramlila stage. The Ramlila is a redeeming point for each of them, the stage brings them together on a singular platform and they undergo a very strong sense of self-recovery," says the director. (MORE)

 

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)

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