Carmona: Ramleela was an ‘emphatic warning’

Addressing Ramleela celebrations at Brother’s Road Hindu Mandir, Torrib Tabaquite Road, on Wednesday night, Carmona said the festival had the “potential to build in all of us a national and international consciousness in the supremacy of a belief that good will always conquer evil and that light will always triumph over darkness.” Carmona noted that Ravan began as a “good, kind and God-loving ruler” whose devotion earned him great powers “but ego and lust got the better of him and Lord Rama had to step in when he made that final error and kidnapped Sita, the wife of Lord Rama.” “Just as Lord Rama conquered the evil King Ravan after he kidnapped Mother Sita, so too as individuals and a society we can overcome and rise beyond trials and afflictions that may come our way,” Carmona observed. Carmona said Ramleela was “one of the oldest manifestations of open air street theatre in the Americas” saying the message of Divali has been “immortalised annually through some 27 Ramleela celebrations all around the country.” “I am in the presence of street theatre magic, where villagers and community leaders take on the role as actors and actresses, craftsmen, choreographers and costume designers, an elaborate cast playing princes, princesses and deities and young children playing the role of sacred animal and birds, finally cascading in the burning of the Ravan effigy in that symbolic triumph of good over evil,” he said.

The President observed that he had attended similar Ramleela celebrations at Mathilda Village, Princes Town last week and was experiencing in Brother’s Road, Tabaquite the “same love, cohesion, togetherness and sense of community among everyone here as I experienced in Mathilda Village.” Afterwards, Carmona, together with Mrs Reema Carmona, shot lit arrows at the towering Rawan effigy as the large crowd of spectators cheered.