[1] A feature film based on the play was directed by Mani Kaul and released in 1971,[3] and went on to win Filmfare Critics Award for Best Movie for the year.
Mohan Rakesh went on to write two more plays, and left one unfinished at the time of his death in 1972, but he had shifted the landscape of Hindi theatre.
[3] Ashadh ka ek din is a three-act play centered on Kalidas' life, sometime in the 100BCE-400CE period.
Torn between his current idyllic existence and love on one hand, and the desire to achieve greatness on the other, he leaves for Ujjayini in a conflicted state of mind.
Mallika, who is now a prostitute with a small daughter, learns that he has renounced his courtly life and the governorship of Kashmir that he had been granted.
"[6] The play portrays the personal toll that both Kalidas and Mallika pay for his decision to reach for greatness.
As Kalidas deserts Mallika and moves to Ujjayini, his creativity begins to evaporate, though his fame and power continue to rise.
"[5] Mohan Rakesh noted in the introduction to a subsequent play, King-swans of the Waves, that, whenever he read Kalidas' Meghdoot, he felt that the poet had distilled out his sense of acute guilt and alienation from his being into that play, and that this realization is what motivated Mohan Rakesh's writing of Ashadh ka ek din.
The production then traveled to the regional Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in East Lansing, Michigan, with performances on 6–7 January 2011.