ABSTRACT
Although Girish Karnad has been, for decades, one of India’s internationally famous playwrights,1 actor both on stage and screen, and esteemed director who has a plethora of awards and honors to his credit in every field he has ventured in, somehow his film Utsav (1985)2 was not a commercial success. We are informed that a film based on the Sanskrit play Mrcchakatikam (Utsav) was conceived by Girish Karnad as early as 1974 when he was the director of the Film and Television Institute in Pune,3 that it was in incubation for almost a decade, and that earlier, it was to be produced in French by a French director, but finally it was produced by Shashi Kapoor in Hindi/English. It was a big budget film, released simultaneously for the Indian and international market. It had all the right publicity, and there were big names in the film industry associated with it. It had Girish Karnad as its scriptwriter and director, and Shashi Kapoor as its producer; it had a stellar cast including Rekha and Shashi Kapoor, both with many memorable roles to their credit. It also had consummate supporting actors like Shankar Nag, Anupam Kher, and Kulbhushan Kharbanda. The music was by the ever-popular duo of Laxmikant-Pyarelal, background singers were the legendary Lata Mangeshkar, versatile Asha Bhonsle, Anuradha Paudwal, and classical singer Suresh Wadekar; the film had authentic costumes and meticulously designed sets by Nachiket and Jayoo Patwardhan.4 In addition, the film was studded with delicately erotic scenes, fresh humor, and the usual medley of songs, dances, and wonderfully choreographed sword-fights. In spite of all that, did the film neither last in theaters for long, nor did it succeed financially. Perhaps it fell right through the gap between an art film and a popular run-of-the-mill film, since it seemed to please neither the elite handful nor the masses of veteran hard-core Bollywood film-fans.
