| Surabhi | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Culture magazine show |
| Created by | Siddharth Kak |
| Directed by | Abhilash Bhattacharya [1] |
| Presented by | Siddharth Kak, Renuka Shahane |
| Theme music composer | L. Subramaniam |
| Country of origin | India |
| Original language | Hindi |
| No. of seasons | 9 |
| No. of episodes | 415 [2] |
| Production | |
| Producer | Siddharth Kak |
| Production company | Cinema Vision India |
| Original release | |
| Network | |
| Release | 1990 – 2001 |
Surabhi ("Fragrance") was an Indian cultural magazine show hosted by Renuka Shahane and Siddharth Kak, which ran from 1990 to 2001 with a year's break in 1991. [3] It was initially telecast on the state-run television channel Doordarshan, and later moved to Star Plus in the Sunday morning slot. [4] [5] [6] Surabhi was produced by Kak's Mumbai-based production house Cinema Vision India. Its theme was Indian culture. The show is India's longest-running cultural series and features in the Limca Book of Records for receiving the largest measured audience response ever in the history of Indian television.[ citation needed ]
The title music of Surabhi was composed by Indian composer and classical violinist L. Subramaniam. Indian cooperative dairy giant Amul sponsored it for a long time, and the show was titled Amul Surabhi. [7]
One of the reasons of its popularity was the weekly quiz open for viewer participation. Being the early 90s, mobile phones and the Internet did not exist in India; so viewers were asked to post their responses using the 15 paise postcard of India post. According to the Limca Book of Records , the show once received the highest ever documented response in the history of Indian television – over 1.4 million letters in a single week. The Indian postal department was forced to issue a different category of postcards called "Competition Postcards" priced at 2 Rupees each for participating in such contests. [8]
During the 1990s, Surabhi had become a benchmark show and is known as "one of the best television shows ever made that reflected the length and breadth of the Indian culture". [5] Subsequently, Kak established the Surabhi Foundation with the assistance of Ford Foundation and started a project on preserving cultural artifacts. [4]