Doordarshan telecasted a series of six stories written by Chekhov. Ranjit Kapoor was the director of this series. The stories focused on deep interest in love life, emotions, life’s ups and downs, poor and rich. These short stories were like a window into the real life. The first story of the series was Cheenk. Sunil Upadhyay did the narration of the play. There were only four characters in this ironic play. Prasanna Soni played the character of Evan; Madhumita played his better half; Deep Kumar portrayed The General, and Rajni played his wife’s role. The story is about “The Sneezer” who fears to ask for an apology from the General because he sneezes on his head at an Opera show. He fears demotion and, is guilty about it. 1 The second story was “Surgery”.
The story had a lot of humour in it. There were two characters in the play; one was the patient who had a severe toothache and, another one was the doctor who was an inexperienced dentist. Kailash Chauhan played the part of the dentist and Kuryatin played the patient. In the play, the dentist decides to remove the tooth of the patient, and all his attempts are humorous. When finally he manages to remove the tooth, they find out that it is only half tooth, so they pray for the successful removal of the other half. The third story was “Shikari”. The characters included Sunil Upadhyay who played Peter; Deep Kumar played the role of the husband, and Rajini portrayed the wife. In the story, the doctor (Shikari) tells the husband various keys to seduce a woman.
Shikhari teaches his friend, who is a newlywed, his fundas of seduction. So, finally, when the husband comes back home, his wife starts to like him though she didn’t like him before. It was a lengthy play with very different emotions at various stages. The fourth story was “Beshara Aurat”. There was a total of three characters, Rajini played the Aurat, Kailash Chauhan played the bank manager, and Anirudh Wanker played the Pochetkin. The Aurat in the play has some of the mental disorder which prompts her to play coercion on the banker to take away all the money.
The fifth story was “Dooba Hua Aadmi” who fails at his huge maritime business for some small fee. Anirudh Wanker played the Aadmi. And Prasanna Soni played the Policeman. The sixth and the last story of the series was “The Gift”. Totally, there were three characters, the son, Deep, his father and Rajini, the prostitute. On the 19th birthday of the son, his father takes him to the house of a prostitute so that he could learn manhood. The father speaks to the prostitute about his son and makes negotiations and also talks about the relationship between a son, and father. But later on, the father realises that this is not the best gift for his son so he goes to the market to find a suitable one. Finally “Chekhov Ki Duniya” came to end after winning the hearts of its audience.