Astavadhana by Dr. R. Ganesh at Shashvatee
I had the pleasure of witnessing one of the most difficult and "endangered" art forms being performed today, an Astavadhana in Sanskrit and Kannada, by the renowned Shatavadhani, Dr. R. Ganesh. He can perform this art form in three different languages fluently, i.e., in Sanskrit, Kannada and Telugu, and according to many, is the only living person today, who can perform this art at least in Sanskrit and Kannada. Without going into the details of both Avadhana and Dr. R. Ganesh's distinguished profile, here is a brief introduction about the two: Avadhana is a literary performance believed to have originated in Karnataka around 12th century AD, and is very popular in the languages of Kannada, Telugu and Sanskrit. Avadhani, the performer of Avadhana, would require to have tremendous abilities of multi-tasking and requires immense memory power too. The multiple tasks that the Avadhani needs to perform range from on-the-spot poetry creation, to identifying the references ...