Bharat Ek Khoj—The Discovery of India
A Production of Doordarshan, the Government of India’s Public Service Broadcaster
Episode 18: Kalidasa, Part—I

With Ravi Jhankal as Kalidas, Pallavi Joshi as Mallika, Virendra Saxena as Matul, Lalit Tiwari as Vilom, Devendra Malhotra as Acharya Vararuchi, Mala Kumar as Anusuya, Prabha Mathur as Priyamvada, Shekhar Thakur as Durvasa, and Meenakshi Thakur as Ambika.

Nehru cited traditions that Kalidasa lived during the reign of Chandragupta II Vikramaditya of the Gupta dynasty. Vikramaditya’s fame rested on the literary and cultural brilliance of his court where he collected some of the most famous writers, artists and musicians, the ‘nine gems’ of the imperial court. As one of the gems, Kalidasa was among the fortunate who experienced life’s beauty and tenderness more than its rough edges. His writings revealed this love of life and a passion for nature’s beauty.

In our times, Mohan Rakesh has scripted the play Ashadh Ka Ek Din on Kalidasa’s life in his native village where he thrived early in the romantic companionship of beautiful Mallika. A lovers‘ tryst on the riverfront is seen as disturbed by a deercub shot by a hunter, who turns out to be aware of Kalidasa’s poetic prowess. The king’s messenger calling the genius to join Ujjain’s royal court soon arrives and a reluctant Mallika bids him adieu. The lovelorn Poet writes his long poem Meghadutam (The Cloud Messenger) where a lover, made captive and separated from his beloved, asks a cloud, during the rainy season, to carry his message of desperate longing to her at Alkapuri, crossing over hills and dales, lakes and rivers, dense forests and roaming deer.

Kalidasa, in real life, is now conferred royalty under the title ‘Matrigupta’. His new princesswife, Priyangumanjari, pays a visit to Mallika’s village out of curiosity, but the indignant Mallika spurns all offers of royal help, now sure that Kalidasa would never return. Meanwhile, Kalidasa moves on to his magnum opus, the play Abhijnanam Shakuntalam presented here blending dialogue with fullthroated Natya Sangeet (dramatic songs) inspired by Kirloskar’s Marathi musical Shaakuntal and sung with gusto by the protagonists to take dramatic action forward.

The King Dushyanta comes hunting to a forest where there is the hermitage of the sage Kanva. The king is prohibited from hunting the hermitage deer, but is offered hospitality by the sage’s beautiful foster daughter Shakuntala. In no time the king falls for the hermitgirl: reciprocated by the latter and encouraged by companions Anasuya and Priyamvada. After a brief interlude of sweet romancing they get married.

On Kalidasa, Nehru quotes approvingly the American scholar, Ryder Kalidasa understood in the fifth century what Europe did not learn until the 19th … that the world was not made for man, that man reaches his full stature only as he realises the dignity and worth of life that is not human. That Kalidasa seized this truth is a magnificent tribute to his intellectual power, a quality quite as necessary to great poetry as perfection of form…

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