The app supplies a digital museum expertise primarily based on the tales of the Ramayana. (Supply: PR Handout)
It was the re-run of Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana on Doordarshan in the course of the COVID-19 lockdown, that made serial entrepreneur from IIT-Delhi Bhuwan Arora and his workforce realise the potential of Indian epics, and its demand throughout the nation in vernacular media. That was the start of TheRamayana app — a digital museum of the Indian epic, with 350+ brief written and audio summarised tales, perspective polls, and quizzes in Hindi and English primarily based on the Tulsidas, Kamban and the Valmiki Ramayana.
“Ramayana is the one epic that binds 1.35 billion Indians collectively. A culturally vibrant nation as ours boasts of an assortment of round 300 totally different variations of Ramayana. Such multiplicity of voices and of the accompanying practices result in immense inside range. Ramayana and Mahabharata are collectively the 2 central Sanskrit scriptures from historic Indian literature. These epics have golden classes and the tales are interspersed with philosophy, ethics, and notes on obligation,” says Arora, who developed the app with 25 faculty college students from throughout India who had been part of an internship program.
Ramayana, a narrative that revolves across the lifetime of Lord Rama and his 14 years of exile culminating in a protracted battle with the demon king, Ravana, is a mythological epic that continues to be learn and mentioned throughout generations. Contemplating the “mammoth affect” that Ramayana has on literature, poetry, and tradition, the applying — launched on Play Retailer and App Retailer in July 2020 — positions itself to be a game-changer primarily based on its portability over different mediums like books.
The app incorporates a group of complete and illustrative guides and offers the viewers a number of filters to pick out tales, such that together with the seven ‘kaands‘ (books), the app has 90+ characters, 100+ important landmarks and places talked about within the Ramayana.
As a substitute of a conventional narrative, nevertheless, the app permits the person to discover numerous sub-stories with the assistance of tags. “The tales in English and Hindi languages enchantment to a big viewers set; audio tales in each languages enchantment to those that stay on-the-move. Perspective polls problem the present traditions and norms, and quizzes brush up the data of the students of Ramayana,” says the 30-year-old, who quickly plans to launch the app in vernacular languages as nicely.
The app developer Bhuwan Arora. (Supply: PR Handout)
Developed over a interval of 1.5 months, the app has referred to the unique texts by Valmiki and Tulsidas for the tales. “The analysis course of had been to attentively learn the unique variations to extract the numerous components and crystalise them briefly tales. Stringent high quality checks for verification had been carried out after every step. It’s ensured that the tales stay factual, unbiased and as it’s — with none distortions. Now we have adhered to chose and verified scientific research to incorporate particulars such because the dates for vital occasions (which have been calculated primarily based on the planetary configurations talked about in Valmiki Ramayana),” Arora tells indianexpress.com.
The app opens with a number of introductory screens and a preview of the options of the product together with three tales from every part of kaand, characters, places or featured guides. After the preview of tales, the person has the choice to unlock the entry to your entire content material by making a one-time fee of Rs 249. The quiz and perspective polls are freed from cost.
Ask Arora on whether or not such a expertise might additionally point out commercialisation of the epic, and he says that it continues to attract its area of interest viewers regardless of whichever medium it’s offered on.
“Sadly, a excessive proportion of historic scriptures has been destroyed and misplaced without end. But, for those that survive, people face issue in approaching them or lack genuine sources to learn them. Utilising the ability of expertise to construct a fascinating interface for customers, we now have the chance to create merchandise that this era can use. The synthesis and presentation of the epic in a brief, user-friendly format within the type of an software and even inventive interpretation, cinematic presentation and numerous view-point and narratives that we’re seeing now in literature will not be precisely ‘commercialisation’. The great thing about Ramayana lies in the truth that with ever-increasing interpretations in literature, cinema, theatre and humanities, the viewers appears to retain the curiosity and needs to know extra. This is because of the truth that our tradition is steeped within the tales, morals and classes from Ramayana,” he says.
Inside a month of launch, Arora says they’ve over 1,300 energetic customers throughout iOS and Android purposes. “We additional plan to launch bite-sized and straightforward to grasp guides for scriptures equivalent to Bhagavad Gita, the Mahabharata, the Vedas, the Quran, the Bible, and different historic texts that enchantment to a wider set of viewers.”
Whereas purposes equivalent to Ramcharitmanas, Sampoorna Ramayan, e-books, and audiobooks about Ramayana are ‘oblique rivals’ for the app, Arora believes it’s the “scope of the epic itself” that enables new and interesting tales to be instructed contemplating Ramayana is claimed to comprise 24,000 verses. “With a number of the finest philosophical discourses, dialogues between mercurial sages, conversations about social points, and different riveting ideas, the epic presents us with a possibility to maintain offering further new content material to present customers whereas buying new customers,” Arora concludes.
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