A lot of us do not take the effort to learn Sanskrit or recite verses in the language because we think it is either tough or merely a language meant for devotional purposes alone. But, would we feel the same way, if someone composes poems for everyday virtues and situations and peppers them with explanations and translations in English along with a a catchy tune to sing along?
Urging people to give a shot to the ancient language is Amaravani (www.amaravaani.org), an initiative to make Sanskrit available for all. Founded by Shankara Narayan BR and Satish Raghunathan, the website has seven tracks in Sanskrit along with text in English and Sanskrit (in devanagari script) and word to word translations in English.
It all started in 2010, when Shankara, a wealth management analyst, was struck by a sudden thought to start a project that quells the misconceptions that surround the Sanskrit language. He soon launched the project with a set of poems penned on subjects such as national integration, motherhood and teacher-student bond by contemporary scholars in Sanskrit from the country.
“The main aim was to make Sanskrit reach everyone and I thought it would be effective if they are presented in form of songs rather than shlokas. So, I approached Satish, a musician from Chennai to set tunes for those verses, to which he readily agreed,” says Shankar.
Satish says the tunes have been composed in such a way that everyone can enjoy and that he has taken extra care to steer clear of devotional touches. “In fact, one of them, a song on national integration has orchestral music and towards the end, it gives one a Tibetian feel,” he says.
“Sanskrit is a vital identity of our country and needs to reach everyone and not just scholars. So we went on to work together, approaching singers such as Shankar Mahadevan, Aruna Sairam and Ramesh Vinayagam, who readily conceded to collaborate. While recording, we have taken special care to see that the words are pronounced correctly,” he adds.
The website became functional in the end of August and the CD album was released by the Minister of Tourism and Culture. “There is going to be a launch in Chennai soon with Samskrita Bharathi and other luminaries from the city taking part in it. We were to release it earlier this week in another function, but there were requests from many to have a separate event to release the album. We are working on having a function soon,” says Satish.