Shravana Banthu

1984 158’ col Kannada d/st/co-sc Singeetham Srinivasa Rao pc Chandrakala Art Ents. p Ekamreshwararao co-sc/dial/lyr Chi. Udayashankar c S.V. Srikanth m M. Rangarao lp Rajkumar, Srinath, Urvashi, Vishwanath, Uma Shivakumar, Leelavathi, K.S. Aswath, Thoogudeepa Srinivas, Shivaram, Umesh

Reincarnation plot with a dubiously ‘secular’ message. The singer Kumar (Rajkumar), on a pilgrimage to a temple he saw in his dreams, meets the spirit of his friend Vishwa (Srinath), unrequited from an earlier birth. The friend recalls their previous lives in which they had been in love with the same woman (Urvashi). She loved Kumar and Vishwa had ordered his men to kill his rival, unaware that this was his friend Kumar. Realising his mistake, he committed suicide and his spirit was condemned to wander until redemption had been achieved. The woman from their earlier life, now reborn as Mary, a Christian, is courted by Kumar with the assistance of the spirit. The two eventually marry after overcoming the resistance of Kumar’s caste-conscious father. This segment involves a comic turn when Kumar pretends to have lost his memory and become ‘Peter from Petersburg’.

Film