When Monica Ravi, a Tamil settled in Minnesota in the US, called the chief of Oviyam Dance Academy, V. Sriram Sharma, and said she had named her newborn after Velu Nachiyar, the 18th century Indian queen, the later went speechless and broke into tears of joy.
Ms. Monica, then a nine-month pregnant, had no clue what baby she would deliver, when she went out to watch the Academy’s “Veerathai Velu Nachiyar”, the Tamil dance drama, portraying the valour of the queen from Sivaganga district.
But after the 100 minutes mind-blowing show, she told Mr. Sharma that she wished to have a baby girl and name it after the great queen. “A month later, she called me and conveyed the good news,” Mr. Sharma told The Hindu here on Saturday after staging the show.
He struggled to get sponsors to stage the shows in Nachiyar’s home state but was immensely happy that his shows were warmly received in the US. Thanks to Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary Vaiko, the Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America (FETNA) helped the Academy stage the shows at five places in the US, he said.
The proudest moment came when the Democratic Maryland Governor presented the seal of Maryland to the Academy, he said,
The history of the queen, who had defeated the British in a war after forming the first women’s army and introducing for the first time guerrilla warfare and human bomb, was conveniently blacked out by the Colonial historians and he had redeemed the history after 12 years of research.
His stumbling on Velu Nachiyar was another interesting story.
When his daughter was born on Christmas Day in 2002, he looked at the Google search engine for some significant event that day, to find Velu Nachiyar died on that day.
He yearned to learn more about her and ended up with the play.
“But for Mr. Vaiko, the arangetram in June 2012 would not have been possible,” he said. The MDMK leader helped to stage 22 shows so far and recommended to the United Nations Cultural Committee to sponsor the show to international audiences, he said.
His wife Manimekalai Sharma, an eminent Bharatanatyam exponent, played the lead role.
The Academy had been invited to stage a show in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Maninagar constituency and proposed to stage shows in seven European countries in the next four months, he added.
