Vikram Aur Betaal Part 17 - "The Unsuccessful Penance of Gunkar"

  • 7 years ago
Vikram Aur Betaal Part 17 - "The Unsuccessful Penance of Gunkar"

Rajni Bala as Gunkar's Mother
Ramesh Bhatkar as The Saint
Vijayendra Ghatge as Gunkar
Lilliput as the Gambler
Mulraj Rajda as Gunkar's Father

Short Summary: Gunkar loses his poor father's all hard earned money in gambling. He is hence kicked out of the home. Wandering, he meets a saint who with his yogic powers can bring forth anything that one wants. Gunkar asks the saint to teach him power. Saint agrees and asks him to follow the two-fold way of attaining the power. Midway after completing first step Gunkar decides to go home and meet his family. He asks saint to bring in some clothes to take to his home as gifts. After returning, Gunkar finishes his second step. But he is not able to get the power.
Question: Betaal ask for what reason Gunkar could not attain the power although he did just as he was instructed by the saint?
Answer: Vikram answers that Gunkar failed as he did not follow the way properly as he was distracted and cut it into two and went home.

Vikram Aur Betaal was a television programme that aired on DD National. The series contained stories from Indian mythology that aim at teaching kids life lessons while entertaining them. The concept of the program was based on Baital Pachisi, a collection of tales about the legendary King Vikram (identified as Vikramāditya) and the Vaitaala, a ghost analogous to a vampire in Western literature.

Vikram Aur Betaal is based on Betaal Pacchisi, written nearly 2,500 years ago by Mahakavi Somdev Bhatt. These are spellbinding stories told to the wise King Vikramaditya by the wily ghost Betaal.

At the beginning of the frame story, Vikramaditya king of Ujjain receives, among other visitors, a mendicant who presents the king a fruit on every visit. In the fruits are later discovered orbs of ruby. Upon this discovery, the king resolves to visit the mendicant, who arranges a meeting under a banyan tree in a cremation ground beyond the city, at night, on the 14th day of the dark half of the month. At the meeting, the mendicant requests that Vikramaditya bring him a corpse suspended from another tree, with which the mendicant might achieve occult power.

Upon Vikramaditya's doing so, the corpse is identified as Betaal, the ghost, who narrates a story to the king, concluding that Vikramaditya must answer a moral question pertaining to the story's characters, on pain of his own death; and upon his answering the question, Betaal returns to his tree.

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