As India went under complete lockdown for 21-days in order to fight the spread of the deadly Wuhan Coronavirus, Doordarshan decided to keep the country entertained by telecasting the two great epics of Hindu civilisation, Mahabharat and Ramayan. Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana was a 1987 television series that dramatised the great epic and was a massive hit at the time. Similarly, BR Chopra’s Mahabharat, a television series from 1988 was also considered one of the benchmarks in Indian television. The hugely popular TV series made a comeback on Doordarshan and the first episode of Ramayana was telecast today at 9 AM.

As the first episode of Ramayan went live, Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana on Doordarshan become the top search on Google in India with several people presumably either trying to find out what time the series would begin or trying to find an online link to watch the show.

Google top search

Not only did Ramayan on Doordarshan become the top search on Google, the Doordarshan website where one could watch the channel live online crashed due to high traffiic.

Even on Social networking site Twitter, four trends in the top 10 trends pertained to Ramayan, Ramanand Sagar, Lord Ram and Doordarshan.

Twitter trends

Twitter Trends

Growing up in the 80s and the 90s, one of the fondest memories is of watching the B R Chopra’s Mahabharat and Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayan on Doordarshan. The roads would go empty as the nation saw Arun Govil as Lord Ram and Nitish Bharadwaj as Lord Krishna. Now that the streets have gone empty again, thanks to the Chinese Wuhan Coronavirus, even in the age of Netflix and Amazon Prime, Ramayan and Mahabharat still capture the country’s interest.

One episode of the Hindu epic Ramayan will air in the morning between 9 am to 10 am while Mahabharat will be aired at 12 noon.