Shatavadhani Ganesh

R. Ganesh (also known popularly as Shatavadhani Ganesh, born 4 December 1962) is a practitioner of the art of avadhana, a polyglot, an author in Sanskrit and Kannada and an extempore poet in multiple languages. He has performed more than 1300 avadhanas, in Kannada, Sanskrit, Telugu and Prakrit. He is known for extempore composition of poetry (āśukavita) during these performances, and even of chitrakavya. He is the only Śatāvadhāni from Karnataka. He once set a record by composing poetry for twenty-four hours continuously. From 30 November 2012 to 2 December 2012, he performed the first ever Shatavadhana entirely in Kannada. On 16 February 2014, in Bangalore, he performed his 1000th avadhāna. Ganesh was born on 4 December 1962, in Kolar, Karnataka, to R. Shankar Narayan Aiyar and K. V. Alamelamma. Ganesh picked up Tamil, Kannada and Telugu from his environment as a child. Also in his childhood, he read Sanskrit and Kannada literature and was writing poetry at the age of sixteen. He learned English at school, and he later learned several other languages like Prakrit, Pali, Tamil, Hindi, Marathi, Greek, Latin and Italian. He has a B.E. degree in mechanical engineering from UVCE, an MSc (Engineering) degree in metallurgy from IISc, pursued research in materials science and metallurgy, has an MA degree in Sanskrit, and a D. Litt in Kannada, which was awarded by Hampi University for his thesis on the art of Avadhana in Kannada.