CHENNAI: Giving the epic Ramayana a contemporary narrative is stand-up comic Rajasekhar Mamidanna. What he calls ‘a comedian’s perspective’ is not offensive but a light-hearted narrative. “I lived each of their lives and let it inspire me.” Bringing it on stage for two years, Chennai recently witnessed his show, Legend of Ram. This is his first content inspired from epics and it is quite special as it takes him back to his childhood. “My parents and grandparents would narrate parts of the epic to me. At that time, all characters were very real.
I ended up reading the entire epic written by Valmiki and Sita by Devdutt Patnaik too!” says Rajasekhar, chatting with CE after the show. From stories dazzling him as a child to pursuing PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, Rajasekhar’s life changed when his cas- ual mimicry stints led him to public speaking and then stand-up comedy. “It has been years since my first show and if I could go back in time and watch himself, I’d be proud and happy,” he smiles. Bringing his childhood alive, his plan was to bring out uncommon scenes and characters of Ramayana on stage.
One among the many was a confrontation scene where Vibhishana advises Ravana to not kill Hanuman, and later Hanuman becomes the reason for Laxmanan’s revival. That scene is his favourite! Where did the initial idea come from? “From the epic itself ! I read a small interpretation where they do a thorough experiment on how the epic would just be a story and the characters were mortals and not gods. I wanted to narrate the epic myself from a comedian’s perspective.
The key was to narrate the story in a non-offensive and non-religious way. It took a lot of writing and revisions,” he chuckles. This fan of Hanuman continues to crack up audiences, but what if they don’t laugh when expected? “Move on like you never made a joke!” Dates for his next Chennai show is on his FB page: RajaSekharMamidanna(RSM) (The writer is a freelance journalist)