Re: on the NJ/NY SatAvadhAnam

D. Sreenivasa Rao (dsr@VNET.IBM.COM)
Mon, 09 Sep 96 11:56:08 -0500 

:>What a magnificent feat! avadhAni nAgaphaNi Sarma reeled gems of poems
:>one after another, completing a varnana here, an Asuvu there, a datta padi
:>here, and a samasya there, many times giving the whole poem at a stretch,
:>to save the total time for the event.

   It was, indeed! A very spectacular literary exercise, complete with
   "mI praSnaku nA pATa" and of course the dhAraNa. It ended around mid-
   night, but it did not seem like we were there for that long (it
   started at 9:30 AM). The avadhAni kept the audience thoroughly
   entertained (with lots of help from the aprastuta prasangulu).

   This was my first SatAvadhAnaM experience, and I was truly amazed
   by the feat. However, I felt that there were very few questions that
   presented a serious challenge to the avadhAni (or may be he is so
   good, he made it seem so easy). By comparison, a tape of his HYD
   dvisatAvadhanaM that I watched yetserday (I bought it during the
   NY performance) seemed to have some questions where I could see
   the avadhAni expending some serious thought to come up with an
   appropriate reply. In the saturday performance, he almost never
   paused to think and came up with *very appropriate* answers for
   the questions. I was a little disappointed that there were a
   disproportionately high number of questions asking for descriptions
   of NY city, america, etc.  'varNana' questions were especially
   disappointing (no implication on the capabilities of the pruchchakas).

   One thing that deserves mention is the sanskrit questions, posed by
   a few local sanskrit knowledgibles. The couple that stuck me as being
   very impressive were both from the 'samsyA pUraNam'. One was

      'mA satI mAnachOraha',

   (I will post the poem tomorrow, or maybe somebody else can if they
   remember/have the pUraNa handy). The other was

      'rAvE, rAvE, ...... (can't remember a couple of words here)
       rAgadE ramyakrishNa'

   in which the avadhAni was asked to choose whether he wanted to fill
   it in sanskrit or in telugu, and he did it in sanskrit.

   There were several more gems, and the above two are certainly not
   the only ones that ring in my ears. I will write more later on, and
   I am sure others will do too. The avadhAni has a melodious voice, and
   came up with some very nice ones for the 'praSnaku pATa' category.
   His digressions were also interesting - I remember a nice padyam he
   recited, narrated by tenAli ramalingaDu when he was asked to use
   the work 'linga' in five different forms. Has anybody jotted down
   the full poem? It was a feast to watch the avadhAni doing dhAraNa.

   I am exceeding the TELUSA limit. More later.

--sreenivas--          dsr@vnet.ibm.com