The Selection Changes You Before the First Performance
The boy chosen to play Rama does not audition in the way an actor does. In most traditional Ramlilas, the ones running in Varanasi, Ramnagar, and hundreds of smaller towns across the Hindi belt, the selection is itself a ritual. Priests examine the candidate's horoscope, his family's ritual standing, sometimes the shape of his features. The moment the decision is announced, the community stops seeing him as a neighbour's son. They begin the adjustment that will govern the next thirty days: they do not touch his feet yet, but they stop meeting his eyes the old way.
