The annual three-day deepotsavam was kick-started at Adilabad Kala Ashram on Friday with Vishkarma Aradhana and lighting of a lamp by Ganesh, a local kolatam expert.
The festival of lamps is held between Ekadashi of Kartika Masam and Kartika Pournami .
This is the first such festival to be organised at the Kala Ashram after the demise of Guruji Ravinder Sharma in April this year.
On the occasion, Gond painters from different parts of Adilabad exhibited their paintings at the Kala Ashram. Baharun, scroll painting artist and singer from Medinipur near Kolkata in West Bengal, has also put her paintings on display, while Indrajit, an Ojha artisan from Tamsi mandal of this district, exhibited his brass metal artefacts.
Those who took part in the event include Sunil Deshpande of Sampoorna Bamboo Kendra of Melghat in Amaravati district of Maharashtra; Sudhakar Reddy, retired head of Department of Fine Arts, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam; retired member of Andhra Pradesh Council of Science and Technology P. Subba Rao; well-known dairy promoter from Kamareddy Balaraju; Ashutosh Jani, an IITian working with tribals in Chota Udaipur of Gujarat; Ashish Gupta, a rural livelihood expert from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh; Prashanth Kumar from Art of Living, Bengaluru; Saheb Rao Shastry, a Sanskrit grammarian from Aurangabad in Maharashtra; and Mayank Ale and other students of animation and filmmaking course in Hyderabad.
