Director: Girish Karnad; Writer: Girish Karnad; Producer: B.V. Ramachandra; Cinematographer: Rajiv Menon; Editor: Suresh Urs; Cast: Sonali Kulkarni, Gargi Yakkundi, Prashant Rao, Geetanjali Kirloskar, B. Jayashree, Sushma, Poornima Chikkerur, Girish Karnad, Padmavati Rao, Appayya, Sivdasan, Suresh Kulkarni, Vijaya Yakkundi
Summary: Karnad retells a Karnataka folk-tale, dubbed in
Hindi, usually told by women while feeding
children or putting them to bed, a time when
other women would also be present. A young
woman, Cheluvi (Kulkarni), living in abject
poverty with her mother and sister, can turn
herself into a tree yielding an endless supply of
blossoms as long as they are picked very
carefully. The son, Kumar (Prashant Rao), of
the village headman (Karnad), seduced by the
scent of the flowers, marries Cheluvi and they
enjoy her flowering in strict privacy. During
Kumar’s absence, the headman’s young
daughter Shyama (G. Yakkundi) forces Cheluvi
to disclose her secret. Unable to comprehend
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the delicacy and beauty of the event, the
children destroy the tree, leaving Cheluvi’s
body as a mutilated tree-stump. In the end,
Kumar disconsolately leaves carting off the
Cheluvi-stump. The folklorist A.K. Ramanujan
pointed out that in Sanskrit and in Kannada the
same word is used for ‘flowering’ and
‘menstruation’. Art direction is provided by
Jayoo and Nachiket Patwardhan.
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