Southern States - Andhra Pradesh   

Literary feat heralds Telugu New Year

By Our Staff Reporter

TIRUPATI April 2. `Ugadi,' the Telugu New Year Day was celebrated with religious fervour in the temple town on Wednesday. While the local temples drew a fairly good crowd right from the dawn, the Lord Venkateswara temple at Tirumala wore a festive look.

The TTD-run temples were decorated with a wide range of flowers mobilised in tonnes by the TTD management through a donation scheme.

The arrival of `Swabhanu' was heralded by a captivating `avadhanam' -- a rare literary feat by Medasani Mohan, director of the TTD's Annamacharya Project at the Mahati auditorium here.

`Avadhanam' is a scholarly exercise wherein a select group of litterateurs shoot a fusillade of queries that are disparate, inappropriate, peculiar, illogical and tongue-twisters, with a lot of strings attached on the usage and ban on specific alphabets and contexts.

The `avadhani' will have to answer all of them in the specified manner at the end.

Being one organised by the TTD's Annamacharya Project, the feat was restricted to queries related to Lord Venkateswara and hence named `Srinivasa Avadhanam.'

The TTD's Executive Officer, Ajeya Kallam, was the chief guest while the Joint Executive Officer, R. Appa Rao, presided.

Litterateurs G.S.R. Krishnamurthy, M. Narasimha Reddy, J. Muniratnam, Rani Sadasivamurthy, P.V. Reddy, Mannava Bhaskara Naidu, D.V. Suresh Rao and H.S. Brahmananda acted as `Prucchakas' and posed queries to which Dr. Mohan shot back his reply with equal ease.

His eloquence in Telugu literature and its articulation enthralled the audience.

Earlier, students of the various colleges in the town recited the 'kritis' of Annamayya to mark the conclusion of the week-long Annamacharya Vardhanti celebrations.

The TTD's astrologer, Gopavagnula Balasubrahmanya Sastry, rendered the `panchanga sravanam.'

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