Vedantam Laxminarayana Sastry, the doyen of today' s Kuchipudi dance, was a legend in his own life time. People of Kuchipudi, including his own disciples, were evasive, slippery and inconsistent when his personal life was referred to because they knew very little about it. He moved in and out constantly even in his youthful days, and in the old age hardly came back to the village. Young boys desirous of learning from him went to him, wherever he was. If he were visiting a place, at the invitation of some patron or disciple, local Gurus, dance students and even enthusiasts who would like to be initiated into dance, saw to it that he prolonged his stay for a longer time so that they could learn from him or see him perform. He ungrudgingly shared his expertise with them, performed where connoisseurs gathered and imparted training without any class and caste discrimination.