Avadhanam

Avadhānaṃ is a literary performance popular from the medieval era in India. Avadhānaṃ was originated and primarily cultivated among Telugu poets. It involves the partial improvisation of poems using specific themes, metres, forms, or words. The true purpose of an Avadhanam event thus is the showcasing, through entertainment, of superior mastery of cognitive capabilities - of observation, memory, multitasking, task switching, retrieval, reasoning and creativity in multiple modes of intelligence - literature, poetry, music, mathematical calculations, puzzle solving etc.