D. Umamaheswari

Daliparthi Umamaheswari is a performer of Harikatha, a form of storytelling through music, speech and dance, in Telugu and Sanskrit. She is known as the first woman to perform Harikatha in Sanskrit ^[2]. She was named for the Padma Shri in 2024 in the field of art, from Andhra Pradesh ^[1].

Training

She was born on 21 May 1960 into a family of musicians in Machilipatnam ^[2]. She learned classical music as a child and studied Harikatha with several gurus, as well as classical dance under Nataraja Ramakrishna ^[2]. She gave her first Telugu Harikatha, Gowri Kalyanam, at the Sarvaraya Harikatha Pathasala, where she later became honorary principal ^[2].

Kalidasa in Harikatha

Her first Sanskrit Harikatha, on Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhavam, was staged at the Kalidasa Academy in Ujjain, where she went on to present almost all of Kalidasa’s plays and poems ^[2]. She has also written Harikathas on figures such as Ramana Maharshi, Sarada Devi and Potti Sreeramulu ^[2].

She has performed at temples across the Telugu states, at Badrinath in 1986, and abroad in Malaysia, the USA, the UK, Singapore, Indonesia and Oman ^[2]. She trains young women to take up Harikatha as a profession ^[2].

She received the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, and the Kalidasa Academy gave her the title Chitra Katha Saraswati ^[2].