Telugus ring in new year with rhymes

CHENNAI: Harvest festivals are usually all about food, but for the Telugu community, which rings in the new year with Ugadi on Friday, the festival is also associated with ‘kavi sammelanams’ or poetry recitations.
On Wednesday, more than 25 poets from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu participated in a special Ugadi poetry recitation organized by the department of Telugu at the University of Madras.“The tradition of organizing poetry recitations to mark Ugadi is at least 100 to 150 years old,” says Sampath Kumar, head of the Telugu department at University of Madras. In Chennai, members from more than 50 Telugu associations come together every Ugadi to organize such an event.
On Friday, they will organize an ‘ashtavadhanam’, an on-the-spot literature and poetry composing event, at Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam on Venkatanarayana Road in T Nagar. “Eight poets will pose challenges to one poet by asking him to compose a poem on a subject, conforming to a specific meter, starting with a specific word or having a particular combination of words at the end of the fifth sentence,” says Kumar.
Poets say the tradition of poetry recitations on Ugadi could have its roots in the courts of the Vijayanagara kings who were passionate about the arts and wanted to begin the new year with good music and poetry. “The practice could have begun as entertainment when people gathered to celebrate the festival. Over the years, it has developed into a tradition,” says Kaasala Nagabhushanam, poet and former head of the Telugu department at DG Vaishnav College.
Participants include poets from all religions and age groups, and the poets insist that the festival does not have any religious significance. “Since Ugadi is related to a change in season, poems usually involve descriptions of nature,” says Nirmala Pazhanivelu, poet and former head of the Telugu department at Bharathi Women’s College in Chennai. “Poets have also started writing about politics, corruption, feminism and pollution,” she says.
Kumar says that much of the poetry recited on Ugadi deals with incidents of the year gone by and expectations from the new year. “Many poets also take inspiration from the Ugadi pachadi, a special preparation of jaggery, chillies, green mangoes and neem leaves,” he says. “They talk about corruption using the bitter taste of neem leaves in the pachadi as a metaphor,” he says.
Maharashtrians and Kannadigas will also celebrate the festivals of Gudi Padwa and Ugadi on Friday while Sindhis will ring in their new year with Cheti Chand on Saturday.