HYDERABAD: Many of their age group have not even heard of Avadhanam, a Telugu literary performance that requires immense memory and multitasking abilities. But SV Sirisha and K Sirisha, teenagers from Khammam, enthralled connoisseurs of the language present at the World Telugu Conference by performing Netravadhanam, a unique art of transmitting letters and movement just through eye movements.
The sixteen-year-old girls, currently pursuing intermediate at a private college in the city, displayed high level of coordination. This is how it worked: people from the audience wrote words on pieces of paper and handed it over to one of the girls, and based on her eye movements the other girl in the opposite side transcribed the exact words on another paper.
The first phrase the duo transcribed was ‘Prapancha Mahasabhalu Jayapradam’, the way it is written here, including the variation in the case of the letters and the punctuation marks just by rolling their eyes left and right, blinking hard for some letters and blinking lightly for others. The audience were stunned seeing the girls, both from agrarian families, perform the Netravadhanam so easily.
Their guru in the art form and also their school teacher, Adinarayana Swamy, was on the stage along with them describing their performance. “They can transcribe Telugu, Hindi and English words along with the syntax given by the person. They have been practising since grade 6,” said Adinarayana. The girls then also performed Anushtavadhanam, where they communicate with each other using just thumb movements.