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Few, if any, would have associated me with an involvement with the stage. But my involvement centred always (with one exception by way of direct participation) around organizing children in dance and drama activity. This was as much for the joy it gave me, as for making them powerful and joyous learning experiences for the children. My first venture was a dance drama woven around the Ramayana story of Lava and Kusa, which I produced for being presented at the All-India Police Cultural Meet at Ootacamund in 1960. It meant personally mobilizing and training children of constables of the Madras City Police where I was then working as Deputy Commissioner in the Crime Branch. For training the children for the dances, I took the help of C.N.Dandayudhapani Pillai one of the great dance masters of that time. And for composing the lyrics and musical scores for the dance sequences, he enlisted the help of the team of K.V.Mahadevan, one of the stalwarts in the field of cine-music. A pair of little girls, identical twin children of a constable, filled in the role of Lava and Kusa beautifully and they danced through their roles with relish, while other kids, performing as animals in the forest scenes contributed several other delightful dance numbers. The picture below taken on that occasion, shows all the members of that team. The event simply captivated the audience, who found it hard to believe that it could be produced by a police officer ! The picture also shows the famous actor Sivaji Ganesan – evidence of the support that we had from the film world, organized largely by my great assistant in these activities, V.G.Manoharan.
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