The 16th convocation of the Potti Sreeramulu Telugu University held at Ravindra Bharathi, on Wednesday, saw gold medals awarded to 30 M.Phil. and Ph.D. students, and 31 students of graduate, diploma and certificate programmes. The research works included social, contemporary, culture, fine arts, and a cross section of prose and poetry in literature. A total of 1,189 students across varied disciplines were awarded the degrees.
For gold medalist M. Anil Kumar, who received his Master of Philosophy degree, it is the music that he heard from a dappu (flat-faced drum) years ago, that drove him to delve deep into the life of Surya Bhagwanta Rao, the acclaimed dappu artist, who also went on to teach dappu for long at the Telugu University.
Like Kumar, it is the dance forms and mentions in Jnanpith Award recipient Viswanatha Satyanarayana’s ‘Veyi Padagalu’ for another postgraduate M. Sudhamala, that became the research point.
