Kālidāsa - Meghadutam

In 1970 Vishwanatha Satyanarayana, one of the most prolific Telugu writers of modern times, was honoured with this award for his Ramayana Kalpavrukshamu, a retelling of the Rama story. Given his vast oeuvre filled with hundreds of bold and original writings, why did the committee single out yet another version of the Ramayana, a translation so to speak, for such praise? The poet himself addresses this issue in his introduction. If you ask, Why yet another Ramayana?Id say that in this world, for all timeseveryone eats the same food every day,but the taste of it is ones own.Everybodys life is their own,we all make our own way,and each ones experience is ones own.I worship the same Rama as everyone elsebut the devotion in my poetry is my own.Ninety per cent of crafting a poemrests with the creativity of the poet.The wise and learned know these emotions to bea thousand times greater than any bold new story. Satyanarayanas views are forthright and unequivocal: the worth of a poem lies almost exclusively in the imaginative spirit of the poet (kavi pratibha). In fact, literary originality in India was never measured by a poets choice of subject but rather by the idiosyncratic manner in which a poet could tell a known story anew. This is why we encounter numerous poems in the later period that praise stylistic novelty and innovation, and hardly (if any) verses bemoaning a poets recourse to weathered themes. It is like the unfolding of a raga in classical music, wherein rasikas rarely savour a new raga or an unconventional tala, but instead delight in the fresh individuality that a consummate artiste brings to bear in the expansion of a traditional raga.