In year 1986 Doordarshan ran a tele-film series called ‘Katha Sagar’ directed by few prominent and few would-be prominent film-makers who presented adaptations of some famous international short stories, but all of them set in various parts of India. In on of these adaptations, Shyam Benegal turned Gogol’s The Overcoat into Nayi Sherwani and set it in Srinagar. The adaption with its scenes of Kashmir life and office bureaucracy makes one think that Gogol had written the story for Kashmir and not Russia (Amin Kamil’s Kafan Chor seems like a darker sequel to Gogol’s story).
Along with Om Puri as the lead, the film had a lot of local names from the Srinagar station like Prana Shangloo, Shadi Lala, Kapil Warikoo, Vinay Raina and Mehraj Shah.
Here’s the film:
