Kolam on the new Tamil Nadu State Assembly building

The team of architects from Germany are inspired by the kolam designs drawn by the rural women in Tamil Nadu and that made them come up with a motif for the new building to be constructed for the Tamil Nadu State Assembly.

TOI Report - In the Public Plaza, a kolam engraved on natural sandstone will cover 14,000 sq m of the floor space. In the eight 3.75 m high and 1.75 m wide columns, a kolam will be spread over an area 2,300 sq m. And in the metal screen that will adorn the entrance of the complex, a kolam will cover 10,000 sq m.

The GMP International's Indian arm Archivista Engineering has selected the motif pattern too. The picture on Times of India - Chennai edition (Oct. 29, 2009) shows a simple 5 dots - 5 rows kolam


Kolams are not just dot and chain patterns. They have an in-built pattern of calculation in them.
If you know about the Fibonacci numbers, this article will interest you.

While the free hand patterns were popular in the agraharams of villages in Tamil Nadu, the chain pattern like the one chosen for the Assembly building were drawn by mostly the illiterate women.

A pattern drawn on of the four sides is repeated and joined with each other to form an even pattern. The calculation facilitates multiplication of the number of dots and enlarging the design with more number of similar patterns in a single kolam.

Colours were not used in kolams. The urban folk introduced the concept of colours in kolams that join the dots through straight lines and these are done on festival days like Pongal. Colours are still not used in the chain kolam patterns. These patterns look bright and beautiful on the plain ground.

View a carpet of kolams here - http://mylaporefestival.com/day3/album/slides/DSC_2002.html

I find the basic single pattern of these kolams to be a pleasant welcome symbol at the entrance of a home even it is an apartment. I wake up to draw very simple ones at my doorstep everyday and I find one of my neighbours come with a paper and pencil to draw the pattern and take it home! She is disappointed when I repeat the kolam patterns!

Here are a few 5 dots 5 rows kolams that I make in front of my home.

Expecting IT refund? Beware of hoax mails!

If you were one among those 'trusted' friends, who online hackers send mails from your friends' email ids when they are 'in distress', you could expect one more mail. This time from the Income Tax Department.

This hoax mail appears as though it is from a genuine website requesting you to give your Bank account number for crediting the Income tax refund. But what the new 'online Bank customers' do not know is that their password is not required to credit or deposit any money to their Bank account. So fall prey to such mails.

Today's Deccan Chronicle (Chennai edition) carries a big advertisement issued by the Income Tax department.


Strangely, I did not find any advert or alert in any of the other papers.
Here is a link to The Independent Media Centre's article on this issue.

Alert your friends too.

Mridangam falls silent with Palghat Raghu

When my friend Devaki called me to say that Palghat Raghu is no more, the mridangam had already fallen silent. She spoke emotionally about the mridangam vidvan, not just as a rasika. But as one who had been in touch with him often during the last three years.

She expressed all her awe about the values he lived with and handed over to the next generation. The way he welcomed the guests who entered his home, his casual 'storytelling' about the days he spent with the Hindustani musician in his sister's family in Mumbai and much more. She shared a lot of her experience with this Sangita Kalanidhi, Padma Sri artiste.
I haven't heard this good about him so far. Nor did I have any personal association with him. His daughter in law Usha and I used to be colleagues in Bank though.
On one occasion I happened to meet him. He had his deposit account in the branch where I was working then. The branch catered to business clients mostly and was not in his residential area too. Still his account with the bank could have been due to his daughter in law who was working in the branch. She was already transferred to another branch, but his deposit remained with this branch. It was overdue to be renewed and we were in a situation of partly computerised and partly manual operations. It took unduly long time to renew the deposit and Raghu had to visit the branch to get this done. He sat down patiently till we went through complex procedures and handed him over a new receipt. He smiled and said thank you after waiting for more than an hour! A gentleman was he.
Today I chanced upon the website the family put together for the artiste, personality Palghat Raghu on his 80th birthday. www.palghatraghu.org
Great website, great pictures that brought the great personality before us. I am told a girl from Kerala specially took this job last year and did wonderfully well.
Different people, different perspectives, different personalities!
May his soul rest in peace!

Pic courtesy - www.palghatraghu.org

Hand crafted paper jewellery

Yes, these are made of papers. And each one is unique as the making of the pieces involves 10 fingers. Fully handcrafted, trendy, eco-friendly and light weight jewellery.
There are gorgeous roses, colourful danglers, traditional yet modern jhumkas to go with your modern and ethnic outfits.

In June last my friend Deepa mailed me a link to Flickr with loads of paper jewellery made by her. She moved on from there to have a shelf for her jewellery in a few places including DakshinaChitra. Then came her blog updating what's she bringing out periodically.

She is not yet another 'craft aunty' or 'jewellery maami'. She calls her brand '10 fingers!'. She does her business online. The packing and despatching the hand crafted jewellery is thoroughly professional.

Now if you want to see a few samples of her work, below are a couple of them.


For orders and more details, go to her blog - http://paperjewellery.wordpress.com/

Senior citizens opt to forego their rights to vote?!

I just had to change the direction of my walk on the day of the Lok Sabha elections in Chennai. Instead of walking towards the right from our road-end, I took a left turn and walked down to Gandhi Nagar.

But it was not that simple for many of the senior citizens here.

For it is more than a walking stretch for them. And crossing the road at the Aavin Park is another they wanted to avoid. My next door 'maami' declared that her single vote does not decide the fate of the country! My another neighbour was waiting to see if any of her friends went by car so that she and her husband could join. But by evening the couple said they didn't vote!

Avvai Home on the Besant Avenue Road was the closest polling booth. But that was not meant for the residents of Karpagam Garden or Padmanabha Nagar. The school is situated in a fairly big campus and could have accommodated the residents of these two areas also.

Adyar Times did mention this in this week's edition (May 17 - 23). But how many votes were not polled due to this reason? Any audit possible so that this can be rectified in the next election at least?

YOCee's reporter programme

When I was doing my graduation, the popular Tamil magazine Ananda Vikatan came up with the Student Reporter Programme. Though I was very much interested in writing I wasn't enthusiastic about being a 'reporter' as I thought it would affect my academic course!

But after 12 years my own child studying in class 3 was writing single page reports whenever he came across something interesting. He was writing in bits of papers with his pencil and was throwing them all over the living room. I accidentally saw his 'report' on an imaginary cricket match, after he saw a lively match on the television. This really opened my eyes, I should say.

Then we moved to Bombay on transfer; but the writing of young children was popping in my mind now and then. It was a dream come true when the kids in our building were introduced to the scribble magazine. The magazine saw eleven monthly issues and then came our transfer back to Madras.

When www.yocee.in was up, the first idea sparked in my mind was the 'student reporter programme'. I had to give a year to set right a few technical issues as to how the bylines would appear on the website, how do we assign jobs to the reporters, how do the reports and photos could be collected and how do the reporters meet periodically to train and get better. . .

There are still a few issues, which we still face - like - meeting the kid reporters at regular intervals is next to impossible as any six kids in the group would invariably have one or the other exam. We are still scratching our minds to find ways to overcome this and have meetings.
Simple, we could meet in small groups, you may think. But hiring a hall for such small meetings is costly and remember YOCee is yet to break even.

Still when the programme that started as passion to see kids writing is being recognised, it makes me feel happy and proud.

This is what appeared in yesterday's Times of India.

Creative writing for the young

I was not sure what the six year and eight year olds would do in a writing camp, when I accepted to do a summer camp for one of my friends.
Originally targetted at 12 year olds, the camp ended up with kids in a much younger group. But looking at the kids on day one, I couldn't resist continuing the camp.

It was partly fun, partly learning - both for the kids and me!

They learnt making their personal profile, made poetry calendar sheet, cracking a logic and making a story, news story ideas, components of a newspaper and how to write a short report!
This is the finale when they made up their daily working sheets together and took home their precious writings!

Stop, Yocee, Proceed!

Indulge, the Friday supplement of the New Indian Express has featured YOCee in the Webscout column today. That took me back by at least 5 years and to Bombay.
I still remember the day on which the first issue of the scribble magazine, Kids Magic was launched at the CanHeritage building in Bombay.

I still remember every moment of each page of the magazine getting ready at the hands of the kids on our dining table.

Many of these kids are now in colleges doing engineering, medicine . . .

And I still remember the day I took the sheets of the first issue for binding, to a bookshop opposite IIT Powai.

Of course I cannot forget the day when the kids first saw their effort as a magazine.

It happened in 2003.

After I moved out of Bombay and landed in Madras in the year 2004, it was just 'evening gatherings' with a few kids in the neighbourhood where we lived then.

We didn't have a big community like the one in Bombay, where 72 families lived in an apartment complex. I still don't live in such a colony. But getting the kids across to have their own space for news, events, happenings that interest them is all fun I would say.

A simple blog on what the kids in Chennai can do in their leisure was the first one to come online. It was hosted by me and I collected the info and posted.

But I wanted that kids should share news and info on a common platform.

So a website, I thought, could be the best place for it.

I didn't feel like leaving the effort I took to host the blog and the thought process that went into the making of such a website. I went on to create that space for kids - online!

That is YOCee.

Kids came together to contribute to the colour and design of the website. A friend, a veteran journalist and publisher proposed the name YOC. The kids added two 'e's to make it sound the way YOC has to be pronounced.

It took three months to get a shape for the website and the D-Day came on Nov. 14, 2006.

There were hiccups, time constraint, revenue issues, personal reasons that could have stopped me from continuing to host YOCee.

But today when I look back and the work of the small team of two hands directing. gathering and keeping the website update, I feel happy.

Narayana Tirtha Aradhana at Tirupoonthuruthi

Poonthuruthi - the place where Lord Siva is worshiped as Pushpavaneswarar, has been on the cultural map of Tamil Nadu since the time of nayanmaars. Tirugnanasambandar, one of the Saiva Naalvar, had visited the temple and written verses on the Lord here.
A little bit about the place - 'thuruthi' in Tamil is referred to a place situated between two rivers. Legend goes like Indra created a garden between the river Cauvery and its tributory Kudamurutti and worshipped Siva at this place.
Apart from the God, a sage who attained 'jeeva samadhi' at this place is also being worshiped by the locals. The Carnatic music fretenity pays homage to this saint Narayana Tirtha, who composed the beatiful verses of Sri Krishna Leela Tarangini. The saint's aradhana and a full day homageon Sri Krishna Janmashtami is held at the brindavanam.

Read my report on this year's aradhana for Kutcheribuzz.

This year the aradhana was celebrated from March 2 to 4. On the last day, my son Prasanna played a few tarangams on chitravina accompanied by Manikudi Chandrasekahar on the mridangam and Hidenori (Japan) on the kanjira. Prasanna is the disciple of 'Chitravina' Narasimhan and 'Chitravina' Ganesh.
Here is a video clip of one song from Prasanna's concert.

Remains of a bus shelter in Besant Nagar

The bus shelter close to the Varasiddhi Vinayakar temple and the Canara Bank, Besant Nagar branch does not exist anymore.

Of course, the Besant Nagar bus terminus is just 50 metres away. The buses need not stop here.

But while removing the shelter, the MTC or Corporation left the remains of iron rods, abruptly cut, at leasr 5 inches above the ground.

The remains three pillars of the bus shelter pose danger to the pedestrians, espcially during night. This particular stretch is not well lit too.

There is a bank branch and a ATM outlet closeby. People walk to the temple in the evenings.

I told a traffic police personnel who passed by and showed this to him.
And posting on this blog. Hope these are removed soon.

Post Office at Rasipuram

When most of the city post offices wear a dull look, it was a pleasant surprise to see a beautifully painted and well maintained post office at Rasipuram, a semi urban place near Salem!

Numerology!

The proprietor of this fruit shop R. R. Kesavan should be a strong believer of Numerology!
But I liked his innovative name for his fruit shop inRasipuram!