| Surabhi | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Culture magazine show |
| Created by | Siddharth Kak |
| Directed by | Abhilash Bhattacharya [1] |
| Presented by | Siddharth Kak Renuka Shahane |
| Theme music composer | Dr. L. Subramaniam |
| Country of origin | India |
| Language(s) | Hindi |
| No. of seasons | 9 |
| No. of episodes | 415 [2] |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Siddharth Kak |
| Production company(s) | Cinema Vision India |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | Doordarshan/ Star Plus |
| Original run | 1993 – 2001 |
| External links | |
| [Official website Website] | |
Surabhi (English: Fragrance) was a popular Indian cultural magazine show hosted by Renuka Shahane and Siddharth Kak, which ran from 1993 to 2001. It was telecast on Doordarshan, the Indian state-run television channel, later moved to Star Plus on Sunday mornings.[3][4][5] Surabhi was produced by Kak's Mumbai based production house Cinema Vision India and had Indian culture as its central theme. The show also holds the distinction of being 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.[6]
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The title music of Surabhi was composed by acclaimed Indian composer and classical violinist Dr. L. Subramaniam. Indian cooperative dairy giant Amul sponsored the show for a long time, and the show was titled Amul Surabhi.[7] The show had a rating of 51 percent in its initial run in 1993.
One of the reasons of the show's popularity was the weekly quiz open for viewer participation. At that time mobile phones and Internet were not so prevalent in India and viewers would 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 still known as "one of the best television shows ever made that reflected the length and breath of the Indian culture".[4] Subsequently, Kak established the 'Surabhi Foundation' with the assistance of Ford Foundation and started a project on preserving cultural artefacts.[3]