Here is your short paragraph on Ram Lila of Ramnagar-Great Mela:
When Durga Puja is being celebrated in the sacred city of Kashi, another great fair commences on the other side of the river in the Maharaja’s city of Ramnagar.
This is the Ram Lila, the cycle of plays which narrates the life strory of Lord Rama.
The plays sponsored by the Maharaja, earlier enacted every evening, beginning at the end of Bhadrapada with the ‘Endless’ fourteenth, named for the infinite coils of Vishnu serpent, Ananta. By the tenth of Ashwin, on Vijaya Dashami day, the triumph of Rama over the demon Ravana is celebrated. This is the year’s great Kshatriya festival.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The very next day, an incident of the Ram Lila is enacted in the streets of Banaras at Nati Imli near the Sanskrit University. The episode is known as the ‘Bharat Milap’, meaning the “Reunion with Bharata’ and it used to attract the largest crowd of any of Kashi’s yearly melas. The 1906 district Gazeteer estimated the crowd at 50,000.
With barely room to move, people jam the streets to watch a simple and yet moving moment in the dramatic action of the Ramayana: Rama, victorious over Ravana, has returned at last to Ayodhya after fourteen years of exile. He meets his beloved brother Bharata, and the brothers embrace.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
That is all that happens, but the crowd goes wild, shouting, “Victory to Lord Rama!” “Victory to Brother Bharata!”. For this moment, the players actually become Lord Rama and Brother Bharata in the eyes of the people and seeing the play is indeed the darshana of the Lord Ramlila is the most popular form of traditional theater with religious associations prevalent in North India. The centres of Ramlila performances are Ayodhya, Chitrakut, Mathura and Varanasi. But the annual Ramlila festival in “Ramnagar and Varanasi at the time of the Dussehra festival is of particular interest.