There were no shift timings, as it was round the clock. Actors like Dara Singh spent three to four hours in the make-up room. The Hanuman look—with his foam rubber-moulded mouth— involved painstaking effort and was time-consuming.

Hundreds of junior artists had to get ready. In the mass monkey scenes, local ideas were adopted—coconut shells with a marble strung between the cut edge to hold between the teeth in the mouth. They were called ‘goti bandars’ or ‘marble monkeys’.

During the shot, they were instructed to hold the marble, and a hundred monkey soldiers would be ready in a jiffy. Sawant Dada worked his make-up magic on everyone, be it the gods or the demons.

The pressure of writing weighed very heavily on Papaji. Imagine writing day and night, scene after scene, sometimes on the set itself, while the shoot was on. The responsibility was immense as the viewership was huge and cut across all social strata.

I remember praying in the Hanuman temple at Connaught Place, Delhi. Once, Papaji felt as if a copper statue of Hanumanji in the opposite shop was speaking to him. He just walked across and bought the statue, without even bargaining.

After that, he would tell me that whenever he had writer’s block, he would talk to the statue kept in his private room about what the dialogues should be. Papaji told me that Hanumanji would ‘speak’ to him and sometimes even narrate the dialogues required for the scene.

As I recall, on 1 January 2003 Papaji met Ashok Singhal, chief of the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), at Sagar Villa. Both of them exchanged their experiences of miracles during the making of Ramayan.

Papaji confided in him about how he had been worried and burdened with self-imposed responsibilities. Early one morning, a sadhu came to Sagar Villa. Papaji was on the terrace with my mother, feeding the pigeons.

It was a normal practice for many sadhus to come home or to our office at Natraj Studios. They were all treated with reverence. Some would want a rail ticket, and others, a blanket, and so on.

If they appeared genuine, their requests were complied with, and if anything was found suspicious about them, they would still be given a ten-rupee note, because Papaji always believed that a sadhu should never be returned empty-handed.

That day, instead of my mother, Papaji decided to meet the sadhu.

He was a very young sadhu and had a brilliant aura around him. Papaji asked him how he could help him. He said that he had come to give him a message from his guru in the Himalayas.

Suddenly, to Papaji’s shock, the tone and volume of the sadhu changed into that of a command, “Who are you? What is this pride—I will not do this … I will not do that! What do you think … you are making the Ramayan! Why are you worried?

“In the upper spiritual world, there is a yojana vibhag (planning commission). India is going to lead the world and a few of you have been sent to create awareness. Do your work and come back …’ The divine-looking sadhu did not look back, and walked straight out of Sagar Villa.

After that day Papaji knew Ramayan was being written and executed by higher powers, and he was only an instrument.

One such example to support this feeling was the sequence in Ramayan in which Bharat, Ram’s brother, refuses the throne. The entire sequence had been shot and canned.

Late at night, Papaji got an inspiration to redo it to make it more contemporary and relevant. Before King Dashrath in his royal court, his council of ministers and the praja (people), Bharat first analyses that there are three affirmations required to crown a king.

The vote of the people, the approval of the gurus and the acceptance of the king to crown his next heir. In the case of Ram, all three conditions were fulfilled. Why, then, was he sent to exile for fourteen years?

If you have a right to vote, it is your duty to protect this right. Surprisingly, no one rebelled when Ram was banished, to live in the forest for fourteen years.

In such cases, where you do not protect your rights, other factors like palace intrigues and secret plots will be forced and dumped on the citizens and the country. This was a commentary on the dynastic family rule prevalent in Delhi.