Vishwamitra belonged to the mythological genre. It used to come on DD national or Doordarshan. It came in the early 90s when Doordarshan used to project such mythological shows which were very popular not only in the older generation, but also in the young generation. It used to come on weekends. The lead role was done by Mukesh Khanna, which is popularly known as Shaktiman, the very first Indian superhero.
The other cast included MulrajRajda aka Guru Vashisht, Dharmesh Tiwari aka Narad, Chakrapani aka Indra, Aparajita aka Arundhati, Bhanupriya aka Menka, Bhavani Shankar aka Brahma, and Sandhya aka Madhvi. The show was produced by Dasari Narayana Rao under the banner, K.R. Films. He was also the director of the show. The story was written by Kamalakara, Kamaleshwara Rao while dialogues were written by Dr.RahiMasoom Reza. YaminiSaraswati was the creator of the show.
Vishwamitra show was about the life of Sage Vishwamitra and also his Tapasaya. Vishwamitra was known as King Koushika who was a very popular king but at the same time was considered to be the most short-tempered king of all the time. In his anger, he used to punish and curse his fellows. Once he got into a rift with Guru Vashisht while he was in a forest. Actually, he was coming back from a war with his army and Guru Vashisht’s ashram was on the way.
He welcomed the army with huge respect and gave food to all. After seeing all this, Vishwamitra became confused as to how can he make so many people have food, and when he asked the same from Vashisht, he answered that he have a special kind of cow which was gifted by Indra. After listening all this, Vishwamitra wanted to have that cow, but Vashisht refused to give him that which made Vishwamitra angry. The war started, and Guru Vashisht killed all the sons of Vishwamitra except one.
Then Vishwamitra went for Tapasya, leaving all his powers to his only remaining son. God Shiva got impressed by his Tapasya, and he demanded Divyaastra for revenge, and again fought with Guru Vashisht but he was defeated again. Vashisht snatched all his weapons and power. He was about to kill him, but Devas stopped him as it could harm entire Earth. Vishwamitra felt too much insulted and humiliated after this and realized that spiritual power had much more significance than physical power and started his Tapasya to become powerful than Vashisht.
He adopted the name Vishwamitra after he went for his Tapasya. After that, he created a new ‘swarag’ (heaven) after being told to do so by King Trishanku. Meanwhile, he had already killed sons of Guru Vashisht for which Vashisht was very angry. After that Vishwamitra had started doing tougher Tapasya to get the title of Brahmarishi and he did impress Brahma ji and got the title. In this way, Viswamitra won over his anger and also got great gyan from Brahma ji. Meanwhile, even Vashisht accepted him as a Brahmin.
One time, Vishwamitra was doing his Tapasya which scared Indra that he would ask for Swaraglok and so he sent Menka there who was very beautiful. Menka was successful in breaking Vishwamitra’sTapasya, and they fell in love. They even had a daughter named Shankutala. But after, when he came to know that she was sent by Indra then he cursed her. This type of mythological shows gives us lots of teachings. This show teaches us that one gets easily distracted by glittery things, but a strong man is the one whose focus will remain on his goal without getting distracted by anything.