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Sunday, Dec 02, 2007
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Popularising Bhanja’s poetry

Staff Reporter

BERHAMPUR: In an effort to popularise writings of Kavisamrat Upendra Bhanja, the Berhampur FM station of All India Radio (AIR) started broadcasting musical serial based on ‘Baidehisha Vilas’ written by this great Oriya poet from Sunday.

This great poet was a scion of royal family of Bhanjanagar, now part of Ganjam district. Assistant station director of this FM station, Syantanu Rath said they are trying to make the new generation get in touch with Bhanja’s great poetic work through the radio as people have wrongly started to say writings of Bhanja are no more understandable.

Along with Bhanja’s writings the listeners would also get a chance to enjoy the depth of Odissi classical tunes as all writings of Bhanja are based on them.

Baidehisha Vilas is the depiction of story of Ramayan by Bhanja in his own style of use decorative metaphors. It has 52 parts or ‘Chhanda’. Each Chhanda has a unique even number of couplet and this number surely has a two in it.

Each Chhanda is written as per the traditional tunes of traditional Odissi classical tunes. A senior Odissi vocal guru, Paschimeswar Jena was the music consultant for this project to choose different tunes for different couplets of a Chhanda.

Whole Baidehisha Vilas would be broadcast through 157 episodes. Each episode would be of 15 minutes. It would start with a commentary on the episode followed by musical rendition of a part of Baidehisha Vilas.

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