Twenty-five years ago, Njattyela Sreedharan, a school drop-out, set out on a journey in search of words. The idea was to compile a dictionary connecting four major Dravidian languages, namely Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu. Travelling across four states and learning Kannada, Tamil and...
Thulasiraman and his brother Hariharasudhan had only seen pictures of the dugong, or sea cow, until two of these sea mammals got entangled in their net as they were fishing off the coast of Ramanathapuram earlier this year. But thanks to an awareness camp conducted for fishermen on how to treat...
A couple of years ago, when A. Jegadeesan decided to construct a house in Annamangalam in Perambalur district, he set himself two conditions. The house would be constructed only by using unfired mud bricks and no tree would be cut for making doors and windows of it. But the self-imposed...
When Ashwathi Mohan moved from Chennai to Toronto in 2019, the visual arts graduate did not see herself as a virtual bridge across two cultures and artscapes. But three year later, the Stella Maris alumna has brought together her experience as an artist and curator at an art gallery to set up...
There are a number of videos and blogs on temples. Unfortunately, most of the documentation gets stuck at the academic or spiritual level. To find a solution to this, Chennai-based conservation architect Madhusudhanan Kalaichelvan has launched a series called “Temple Run 2.0” on August 1 by...
Parai, an ancient percussion instrument, was once popular in the social and cultural life of Tamil Nadu. But over the years the instrument lost its importance and faded into oblivion, played only by a few communities. However, Mutamil Bharathy, a native of Karaikudi, has been trying to revive...
Even though archaeological excavations have been conducted in various parts of India since the Independence, archaeology remained a subject confined to researchers and scholars until a decade ago. However, things have changed today. The popularity of social networking sites and formation of...
Statues of the Tamil poet, nationalist and freedom-fighter Subramania Bharati (1882-1921), or Bharatiyar as he is known to Tamils, have been erected in many parts of India as well as abroad. Barring a couple, most of these statues are stereotypical, particularly when it comes to the expression...
Caraka, the extraordinary physician and the author of Caraka Samhita, an ancient treatise of Ayurveda, is believed to have lived during the time of the Kushan empire that flourished in today’s north India between 200 BC and AD100. Being one of the three foundational texts of Ayurveda (the other...
When V. Venkayya was a science teacher at a high school in Kancheepuram, he would often visit the Kailasanathar temple, built by the Pallava king Narasimhavarman (II). Attracted by the Pallava architecture, he soon extended his journey to the famous shore temples of Mamallapuram, the ancient...
