Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan returns to TV; ‘Sita’ Dipika Chikhlia says ‘history is repeating itself’

1983 TV show Ramayan returning to TV again.

Ramanand Sagar’s ‘Ramayan’ that broke records last year during nationwide lockdown is coming back to the silver screen. As Maharashtra enters another partial lockdown, the mythological saga starring Dipika Chikhlia and Arun Govil will be aired every day on Sat Bharat at 7 pm.

The news was confirmed by the actor herself, who essayed the role of Sita on her social media handle. Dipika posting a picture of her look in the serial expressed her excitement about being on the small screen again this year. Calling it ‘history repeating itself’ she shared that the show was an important part of not just her, but also of lives of thousands of Indian families.

Ramayan was broadcasted on national TV last year where the nation went on coronavirus-induced lockdown and shooting for TV soaps, movies were stalled indefinitely. To encourage people to stay at home, Minister of Information & Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar announced the return of the show in March and several netizens, ministers shared screenshots of watching the show. In two weeks DD National clocked record 7.7 crore viewers all across the world where it was aired. Ramayana became the highest-rating rating show for a Hindi General Entertainment Channel since 2015. The following week it garnered 580 million impressions for morning rerun and 835 million impressions for evening telecast.

The success of Ramayana brought back the other epic TV show Mahabharat, Shri Krishna and other popular shows like Shaktiman, Bomkyesh Bakshi. Sat Plus’s Mahabharat featuring Sourabhraaj, Shaheer Sheikh, Pooja Sharma also managed to hook the viewers to the TV screen and got TRPs roaring.

Created, written and directed by Ramanand Sagar, the TV show Ramayan also starred Sunil Lahri as Lakshman, Dara Singh as Hanuman and Arvind Trivedi as Ravana. The show was originally aired between 1987 and 88 and was based on Tulsida’s Ramcharitmanas and Valmiki’s Ramayan.