Coramseemee Leembruggen’s memorial at Armenian church Photo: R. Ravindran / The Hindu
International Women’s Day was celebrated this week and so it’s perhaps appropriate that this week’s story is about a remarkable woman, who may not have lived in Madras, but has a memorial in the city’s Armenian Church.
Located on the western wall of the verandah that leads to the church is a handsome memorial dedicated to Coramseemee Leembruggen. As to what such a Dutch name was doing in the Armenian church was a puzzle to me till I readArmenians In India, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day by Mesrovb Jacob Seth, written in 1937. I learnt that the lady was an Armenian whose real name was Hripsimah. Coramseemee or Khoromeseemee is apparently the corrupt form of the Armenian name.
She was born in 1778 as the only daughter of Eleazar Woskan, a wealthy Armenian based in Surat. While still in her teens, she was given in marriage to Stephen Agabob, an elderly widower whose sole aim in life appears to have been to marry young girls and treat them harshly. Not one to stand such brutality, Coramseemee left him and took refuge in the house of an English doctor, who was a family friend. In 1795, she fell in love with Robert Henry Leembruggen, a Hollander who was in the employment of the Dutch East India Company in Surat. However, knowing fully well that he was not to be trusted financially, she had the prudence to enter into what would today be known as a pre-nuptial agreement. As per this, her Rs. 40,000 in cash and valuable jewels were to be hers alone, and she was in no way to be held responsible for any debts her husband may incur.
They lived happily for a while, during which time Leembruggen was transferred to Colombo and Nagapattinam. By then, they had begun a business, of which she was sole proprietor. Differences arose over Leembruggen’s profligate nature and the couple separated in 1817, with Coramseemee paying her husband a monthly maintenance allowance of 25 pagodas thereafter. He died in 1819, leaving behind nothing but some old furniture that she never bothered to claim. She ran her business successfully on her own, till her death in 1833.
Between 1819 and 1833, she had the habit of making a new will each year, copies of which were sent to the Armenian Church, Madras. When she died, the last will and testament, after several charities to Armenian causes, left the bulk of her estate to the Armenian Church, Madras, for the Armenian Orphans Fund. The memorial here was put up for her in gratitude. Two other legatees, the Armenian College and the Armenian Church of Nazareth in Calcutta put up a memorial for her in the church in that city.
Taking into account her tombstone in Nagapattinam, there are therefore three memorials to her in India. That must be a record of sorts.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Shriram V / Chennai – March 14th, 2016
In 1960s, Barbara Harriss-White along with her husband John Harriss began an extraordinary journey driving down from Europe to India in an old Ford van to take part in a mountaineering expedition to Kishtwar Himalayas.
The journey changed her life forever and for the next 44 years, Barbara spent visiting Indian small towns to understand the informal capitalist economy and its regulative politics. She chose Arni, a municipality in Tiruvannamalai district, for her life time study.
In an exclusive e-mail interview with S V Krishna Chaitanya from Oxford ahead of the International Women’s Day on March 8, Barbara, who is an Emeritus Fellow, Professor of Development Studies and Senior Research Fellow in Area Studies at Oxford University, took him through her astonishing journey, her love for India, especially Tamil Nadu, which sowed the seeds for her lifelong study that inspired her to pen 35 books, over 225 book chapters and journal papers, almost all on India. Her work in India is now setting a trend for other sociologists across the world to take up similar studies of small towns.
Excerpts from the interview:
Tell us about the experience of driving all the way from Europe to India.
In the 1960s many young people from Europe took the Overland Route in search of exotic India. We had been invited to a mountaineering expedition to Kishtwar Himalayas. Mountaineering had suited my need to escape and learn about extreme environments. We were poor students at Cambridge. My husband John bought an old Ford van, and we set out. The experience was life-changing. Our van passed through Pakistan descending down the Khyber Pass. The Green Revolution was in its infancy in both Punjabs.
Why did you choose the town Arni for your lifelong study?
People ask me why bother to sweat it out in episodes of field research over four decades in a rapidly growing and changing town, Arni, that is obscure to all but those who live there? With a touch of incredulity local businessmen enjoyed the sight of a European woman, tailed in those days by a line of small ragged children, drawing maps of the businesses in town.
It became known locally as ‘professor’s work’. Because of Arni’s multiple societal dynamics and it being at the centre of the Green Revolution on TN’s Coromandel plain, I chose this town. Besides, it was also the closest market town to the village in which my husband John was researching capitalism and peasant farming.
What purpose did such exhaustive study of a small town serve? Whom does it benefit?
Over four decades, this research has explored a rolling agenda of questions about ‘Middle India’, non-metropolitan India’s economic and social development, which cannot be answered in any other way than through sustained or long-term rural and urban field research.
Over the years it has been possible to build an archive of comparative field material on rural markets and the policy processes through which the State intends to control them on the ground: rice in southern India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and West Bengal; coarse grains in central India and Francophone West Africa; and lately jhum products in Arunachal. A Chinese sociologist is taking the questions we asked in Arni to market towns in China. If only a young generation of Indian scholars would carry it on into the future!
What are the challenges you faced…did the people accept you to begin with?
To start with, I found Tamil very hard to learn because in the field, talking to businessmen I had no opportunity to practice, make mistakes and learn this beautiful but difficult language. Gradually I came to terms with the fact that I would never be a fluent speaker but I understand the language – territory of my research and work through assistants.
This means I can check and write down the interviews while the conversation is being choreographed. In fact, in juggling all these roles at once, an English interview is quite difficult!
The first wholesaler I ever interviewed, one very long evening in Vellore in 1973, took me through the entire process of paddy and rice marketing and milling and taught me about equipment, technical terms and the tricks of the trade. That was a revelation and a huge gift. Some of the most fascinating details come as digressions in talks about politics, or how local business builds the local economy or visits to meet their families at home.
Is the rural India keeping up with the pace of urban India which is seeing rapid growth?
That’s a question not answerable through field economics. It needs all India statistics, which many feel are not reliable. But we know from India’s fine school of long term village studies started exactly a century ago by Gilbert Slater in what is now Tamil Nadu that the urban industrial economy feeds upon the rural one.
In some regions returns to agriculture are good, even to rice but especially to vegetables, sugar cane and high value crops. But the reasons people are migrating in droves off the land are environmental degradation, the water crisis, the encroachment of common land, the squeeze of costs and prices, the pull of higher wages in the non-farm economy and the constant need to supplement the returns from tiny smallholdings by work other than in agriculture.
Even now, a majority of villagers have agriculture as their primary source of income. So the relative neglect of agriculture by the State is something this cannot support.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Chennai / by Express News Service / March 07th, 2016
It was at a dinner the other night, when someone wondered why an eminent industrialist from Madurai had gone to Madras Christian College instead of American College in Madurai, that it suddenly struck me that the American missionary presence in this part of the world is 200 years old this year, causing me to interject with a non sequitur. The American Ceylon Mission sank roots in Jaffna not long after the Rev. Daniel Poor and his wife arrived in Colombo on March 22, 1816 together with two other missionary couples and a bachelor clergyman.
Rev. Daniel Poor
Poor opened the first American-run school in this part of the world when on December 9, 1816 he opened the Common Free School, now Union College, in Tellippalai, Jaffna. Seven years later, in Vaddukkoddai, Jaffna, he established another school that was to become the renowned Jaffna College from where came the first two graduates of the University of Madras (Miscellany, August 9, 2004 and October 29, 2012).
It was amongst the second batch of American missionaries to Jaffna that there arrived Dr. John Scudder, said to be the first medical missionary in the world. After working in Jaffna from 1820 to 1836, Scudder, the grandfather of the legendary Ida Scudder of Vellore, was moved to Madras where he established the American Madras Mission that year. He was to move to Vellore in 1841 and found the American Arcot Mission there.
But before the move to Madras, the Revs. Levi Spaulding, Henry Hoisington and William Todd and three Jaffna Tamil students (as translators) visited Madura in January 1834 to establish the American Madura Mission. They soon established two schools there but it was left to Poor, who moved to Madura in 1835, to found 37 schools in the district, including the one that became American College, Madura. He was its first Principal. He returned to Jaffna in 1850 and died there in the cholera epidemic of 1855. On June 28, 1915, one of the finest libraries in South India, the Daniel Poor Memorial Library, was opened in his memory. Its splendid new building, opened in 1926, was funded by a grand-daughter of Poor.
The close connections between the American Missions in Jaffna, Madura and Vellore (the Madras Mission gave way to the numerous British missions then moving in) led to the development of Kodaikanal as an important hill station (Miscellany, September 4, 2000). A connection with Madras, however, remains. The American Ceylon Mission, being a constituent of a union of congregational churches in South India, is part of the Church of South India, headquartered in Madras from 1947.
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Jesse Mitchell’s charger
My ever-regular correspondent in Australia, Dr. A. Raman, having seen that unique picture of the Museum Tower (Miscellany, February 29) sends me another picture — but this, though many may have seen its focus in situ in the Madras Museum, I feature because it has a story to tell. It may be considered a memorial to the man who could well be considered the founder of the Connemara Public Library, one of India’s four national libraries, Capt. Jesse Mitchell. Raman had received this picture and the one believed to be that of Jesse Mitchell as well as other information about him from Chrissy Hart whose brother had been researching their descent from Mitchell.
Jesse Mitchell
Another of those Irishmen to join the East India Company’s Army, Mitchell arrived in Madras in 1829 and was immediately sent to the Pallavaram cantonment. He records an abiding memory of his first days there spent in regaining his land-legs. During those days meant for rest and recuperation, he and fellow newcomers went through “the terrible ordeal of drinking a strong dose of salts and senna every alternate day for six days, (while) formed up in line in the presence of the doctor”. On the last day “we were informed that the salt junk eaten on board for 3 months was washed clean out of us, and we were now fit for our exile in India for 21 years, when we would be entitled to a pension and allowed to go back to our mother”. They were then posted to various regiments, Mitchell being sent to join the Madras Horse Artillery in Bangalore.
While Mitchell was seeing action in China and different parts of India, the Madras Museum was inaugurated in January 1851 with Dr. Edward Balfour in charge. It was born through the efforts of the Madras Literary Society which petitioned the East India Company in November 1843, approval being given in 1846. After being located in the upper floors of the College of Fort St. George (Egmore) it moved into the nucleus of its present premises, The Pantheon, in 1853.
Why, when Balfour retired, Mitchell was chosen to take charge of the Museum cannot be explained, unless you take into account a couple of papers he wrote, ‘On the Influence of Local Altitude on the Burning of the Fuses of Shells’ and ‘Description of a Plain or Waxed paper Process in Photography’. Whether those papers justify the explanation that he was appointed part-time supervisor of the Museum because of his interests in microscopy and Natural Science is debatable. But once he was there he did a remarkable job. He acquired a variety of small fauna, shells and fossils from foreign museums in exchange for specimens from the Madras Presidency, started a collection of old coins and medals, and added to Balfour’s Amaravati collection of sculptures. In all he added over 72,000 specimens to the Museum’s collection before he passed away in 1872. One of those specimens that he added to the Zoology Gallery was the skeleton of the horse seen in my picture today, his regimental charger.
The skeleton of the horse in the Madras Museum
But perhaps the most significant thing he did was write to the Government in 1860 urging it to fund a library: “A few hundred rupees, judiciously expended every year, would place before the public a library of reference that would in the course of time be an honour to the Government.” His wish was fulfilled in 1862, when Government funding enabled the opening of a small library in June that year. This library evolved into the Connemara Library. Initially the library was supervised by the Museum, but in 1939, Dr. F.H. Gravely, the last British Superintendent of the Museum, had the Library separated from the Museum, each with its own head.
Of Mitchell, still very much a part of Madras in St. George’s Cemetery, it was said, “He had very clear ideas of the functions of Museums; first to contain as complete a collection as possible of the natural production of the country and other parts of the world, duly named and systematically arranged as a means of encouraging the study of Natural History, and secondly, to do its share in the advance of Science.” Advancement of knowledge he saw through libraries — and made it happen. That was perhaps a more memorable an achievement of his than all his splendid work for the Museum.
*****
Setting things straight
My Irish visitor Aine Edwards writes to tell me that some of my detailing in the item on Sr. Loreto (Miscellany, February 22) needs correction and she clarifies that the Little Lambs School in Perambur “is a multi-denominational school with Christian moral teaching” and that it was founded by Maria Gislen, not Sr. Loreto. Aine Edwards had volunteered at the school and was introduced by a mutual friend to Sr. Loreto of the Presentation Order who has been “based mainly in Madras”.
My correspondent, quoting Sr. Loreto, says that the names of the first Presentation nuns to arrive in Madras were not those listed by the publication with which the Irish Embassy was associated. Then citing a website of the Presentation Order they gave me two names on my list as well as Mother Frances Xavier Curran, instead of Xavier Kearney, and a Miss Josephine Fitzsimon instead of a Johanna Fitzgerald. The website does not list Ignatius Healy. I also learnt that the Kellys we both listed died of cholera, Regis in 1844 and Martha 18 months later.
But as usual I wonder about the accuracy of some of the material on the worldwide web. This time, the site Aine Edwards refers me to, says those first nuns moved to “what was once Robert Clive’s office, now to be the first Presentation Convent in India”. I can hardly imagine either of the Clives, Robert or son Edward, having an office in Black Town or the Catholics being given space in the Fort after 1749!
The information sent to me also indicates that the Presentation Order went beyond education in India. They helped with healthcare. In 1928, they staffed the railway hospital in Golden Rock (Trichy), in 1933 they established a hospital in Theni, and they opened a hospital at Manapad on the Fisheries Coast.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus> Society / by S. Muthiah / March 05th, 2016
T.Sethumanikavel, who won silver medal in swimming competition in the South Asian Games, being given a rousing reception at Vannarpettai in Tirunelveli on Saturday.— Photo: N. Rajesh
Swimmers, sports lovers and students accorded a rousing reception to 16-year-old swimmer T. Sethumanickavel as he reached Palayamkottai, his native place, on Saturday afternoon after winning the silver medal in the 100-metre backstroke event in the South Asian Games at Guwahati.
Accompanied by ‘chenda melam’ and a caparisoned elephant, the floral reception accorded to the young swimmer on a sultry afternoon by Rajya Sabha MP Vijila Sathyananth even as the public crossing the Chellapandian Traffic Island were looking at the teen in awe, will certainly motivate him to achieve more in the aquatic meets in the future.
Having made his presence felt in school, divisional and State-level swimming competitions in the past, lanky Sethu has won several medals in the national events since 2012 and got fourth place in the international meets for school students.
While bagging 6th place in the international students’ meet held at Israel in 2014, Sethu managed to secure fourth place in a similar meet in Poland in the next year.
During an informal chat with reporters on reaching Palayamkottai, Mr. Sethu made it clear that his next target was winning gold medal in the 2018 Asian Games and then medals in the 2020 Olympics. “If the Central and the State Governments, which are executing various schemes for encouraging young sportsmen, can help me, I’ll certainly win medals for my country,” Sethu said.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> National> Tamil Nadu / by Special Correspondent / Tirunelveli – February 1th, 2016
The founder of ‘Kalakshetra’ was honoured with numerous national, international and state awards.
Search engine giant Google on Monday celebrated the 112ndbirth anniversary of Rukmini Devi Arundale, a pioneering dancer of the 1930s, and a visionary institution-builder who built a public cultural and educational centre known as Kalakshetra.
The doodle features a depiction of Rukmani Devi in traditional dance attire with flowers in her hair holding up a mudra amidst trademark lettering of the search giant in trailing pink.
Rukmini-Devi-Arundale established the International Academy for the Arts in 1936, renamed as Kalakshetra in 1938 (kala refers to the arts, and kshetra to a field or sanctuary).
One of the eight children of Nilakanta Sastri and Seshammal, Rukmini was born on February 29, 1904, in Madurai. Brought up in the traditional set up, Rukmini Devi was trained in Indian music by some great musicians. But dance in which field she was to make her mark later was absolutely forbidden to young Rukmini. The only women permitted to dance at that time were the ritually dedicated women known as devadasis in South India.
Rukmini’s father, who was a Sanskrit scholar and an ardent Theosophist, enlarged the intellectual dimensions of his orthodox family by exposing them to the humanist ideals of Theosophy. In one of the Theosophical Society parties, young Rukmini met George Arundale, close associate of Dr. Annie-Besant. Arundale fell in love with young Rukmini who was then barely 16 years of age. He proposed marriage. They were married in 1920.
Love for animals
Rukmini’s love for animals and birds is well known. A Rajya Sabha MP in 1952 and 1956, she introduced the Bill for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which was passed in 1960. She was Chairman of the Animal Welfare Board from 1962, till her demise.
Rukmini Devi was honoured with numerous national, international and state awards, including the Padma Bhushan (1956), Sangeet Natak Akademi (1957), Desikothama (1972), Kalidasa Samman (1984) and many others. She served as a Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) for two terms.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Entertainment / by Internet Desk / February 29th, 2016
Rugby in the country, and in Asia, has a lot of picking up to do, writes TANAY APTE
In our cricket-crazy country, it would be safe to assume that all other sports fall under the minority category. In their fight for more recognition, football, hockey, badminton and even kabaddi now have glitzy, cash-rich leagues — modelled, ironically, on the IPL. These have gone some way in increasing the sports’ fan following, but are nowhere close to dislodging cricket off its pedestal.
And then, we have rugby. The first rugby match was played on Indian soil nearly 150 years ago, in 1872, in Kolkata — a team of Englishmen took on another with Scottish, Welsh and Irish players. Almost a century later, the Indian Rugby Football Union (IRFU) was founded in 1968. But, it received recognition from the International Rugby Board only in 1999.
The sport is a huge hit among Western European countries, Oceanic countries and, of course, in South Africa. To increase its popularity in Asia, the governing body, Asia Rugby, introduced the Asian Seven Series in 2009. Although it has not set the world alight by any means, the quality of rugby has definitely improved.
After the success of last year’s Asian Rugby Sevens Olympic Pre-Qualifiers in Chennai, the city was given a chance to host the Asian Rugby Development Sevens Series as part of the Asia Rugby Sevens calendar. The tournament took place at the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium on February 20 and 21.
Nasser Hussain, the General Manager of Rugby India, had said, “Riding on the success of last year’s edition, the top teams in Asia are well prepared to raise the bar of the competition. We will witness some of the best Rugby in Asia, during the course of the tournament.” He was not wrong.
Hosts India competed against the likes of South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Guam, Bangladesh, Nepal, the UAE, Lebanon, and Chinese Taipei, which eventually emerged victorious in the men’s section, beating Thailand 36-21 in the final, with a powerful display. The women’s final was a cracking affair, in which South Korea defeated Guam 24-19, via a golden try after the game ended in a tie at the full-time whistle.
The Indian women’s team won the bronze medal match against Nepal in a lopsided encounter, in which the score read 39-0. The men’s team ended up with a sixth-place finish.
In a country of more than a billion, you would expect some semblance of a crowd at an international sporting event. But, although their numbers were scarce, the locals turned up the volume throughout the tournament. With drum beats, whistles and loud cheers, the atmosphere at the stadium egged on the players to give it their all.
Rugby is still not a professional sport in India (though there are roughly 50,000 men and women playing it), and the sport finds it hard to attract the investment needed to take it to the next level.
Asia Rugby’s tournament consultant, Aaron Stockdale, however, believes there is light at the end of the tunnel. “Over the past decade, India has consistently been developing as a serious contender in the Asian rugby circuit. With an event of this stature being held here, it is only a matter of time before the youth of this nation help build a formidable line-up that will compete amongst the best.”
The 2019 Rugby World Cup is scheduled to take place in Japan — the first time an Asian country will host the event. Japan’s stunning win over South Africa in the World Cup last year sent shockwaves throughout the sport. It put Asia on the rugby map and, more importantly, gave hope to the Asian rugby nations that they can mix it up with the big boys and not feel out of place.
However, that date might be a bit too soon for India, as the sport is still in its infancy. But, with careful nurturing, we can one day see ourselves staring at TV sets as the national team goes toe to toe with rugby’s finest.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Tanay Apte / February 22nd, 2016
SPIC Chairman A.C. Muthiah presented with ‘Order of Leopold II’ of the Kingdom of Belgium at a function in Chennai on Wednesday. Pieter De Crem, Secretary of State for Foreign Trade of Belgium, H.E. Jan Luykx, Ambassador of Belgium to India, Bart de Groof, Consul-General of Belgium for India, are in the picture. Photo: Shaju John
The Kingdom of Belgium on Wednesday conferred the ‘Order of Leopold II’ to SPIC chairman, A.C.Muthiah, for his services as honorary consul of Belgium.
Mr. Muthiah served as honorary consul for 25 years from 1988-2013.
Pieter De Crem, Secretary of State for Foreign Trade of Belgium, recalled Mr. Muthiah’s services to Belgian citizens in South India.
“I specifically mention your hospitality during the visits of both our King Albert and crown Prince, now King Philip,” he said.
The minister said Mr. Muthiah resigned from his post in 2013 after Belgium decided to open a Career Consulate General office in Chennai.
“This is a proud moment for me to receive the honour from the Kingdom of Belgium,” Mr. Muthiah said. He recalled Prince Philip’s love for Sanskrit. When he visited Chennai, Mr. Muthiah had arranged a Sanskrit teacher to teach him the language. N. Ram, Chairman, Kasturi & Sons, participated.
This article has been corrected for a factual error
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Chennai / by Special Correspondent / Chennai – February 18th, 2016
K G Arun, an associate professor from Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI), was part of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory Scientific Collaboration (LIGO LSC), which made headlines across the globe with its most stunning and significant discovery of gravitational waves.
What is your role in this discovery?
I was one of the 61 Indian participants, representing the CMI in the LSC, under the umbrella of the Indian Initiative in Gravitational-Wave Observations (IndIGO). The CMI’s role was to check the correctness of the detected GW signals and analyse whether the monitored wave form was consistent with Einstein’s relativity theory which was crucial in the final phase.
What was the method of operation?
We started working on this research right from September 2014. We regularly interacted with the scientists in the United States and other countries through teleconferencing about the recent developments in our research work. Since I have worked with some of these experts in earlier researches in St Louis and Paris, that helped me a lot.
What was the most challenging portion?
Though the entire research work is complicated, we, the Indian scientists, found the initial stages of research more challenging. Since there were several methods and algorithms to validate the relativity theory, we had to explore every one of these to arrive at one single method which can answer the question of consistency. Though the theory was proposed 100 years ago, changes less than the scale of nucleus of an atom were recorded and analysed.
Support from your Indian counterparts and the government?
Research of this magnitude was not possible without their support. My entire research was from the institute (CMI) funded by various government agencies including the Department of Science and Technology (DST). We had several conferences and meetings regarding this and scientists from LIGO-India were extremely supportive throughout the entire process.
What does this detection mean or what is its significance?
This is a very important breakthrough in the field of astrophysics that has provided new ways to look at the universe. This will also allow us to know more about the Big Bang and with LIGO-India’s GW detector proposal in India, this gives us a chance to colloborate with various other industries that can help in differentiating conventional and gravitational astrophysics.
PROFILE
Dr K G Arun
Associate Professor, Chennai Mathematical Institute (CMI)
Qualifications
Ph D, Raman Research Institute, Bangalore
MSS in Physics, Cochin University of Science and Technology
Positions Held Previously
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Washington University in St Louis, USA.
Virgo Ego Scientific Fellow, Institute of Astrophysics (IAP), Paris
Associate of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Bangalore
Research Interests
Gravitational Wave Astronomy
Short Gamma Ray Bursts
High Energy Astrophysics
Cosmology
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> Cities> Chennai / by Ram M. Sundaram / February 13th, 2016
Mervin Alexander, Postmaster General, Chennai City Region, releasing a special postal cover on Thursday evening. Photo: G. Krishnaswamy
Countries should come forward and release commemorative stamps recognising the service done by Inner Wheel clubs in their countries, said Post Master General (Chennai Region) Mervin Alexander, while speaking at the Golden Jubilee celebrations of Inner Wheel Club of Madras here on Thursday.
Alexander said such commemorative and cancellation stamps were mainly based on certain themes. At present, such stamps were released for the work done by Rotary Clubs all over the world.
“This is the first time such special cancellation is done for the service of Inner Wheel in the country,” he said. Addressing the gathering, Charlotte De Vos, International Inner Wheel president, said she was happy to see many enthusiastic women volunteers and members take the vision of Inner Wheel across the country. She also said that she was touched by the passion and commitment of the members of the Inner Wheel Club of Madras in serving the general public, especially women and children. Earlier, danseuse Anita Ratnam enthralled the audience with a dance performance as a tribute to her mother, Lily Ratnam, who was association president of Inner Wheel Clubs in India.
On the occasion, a special postal cover with special cancellation was released by the Post Master General. Also, The Golden Journey , a book that deals with the journey of the Inner Wheel Club of Madras in the past 50 years, was released on the occasion.
Noted participants at the event included Kamala Ramakrishnan, convenor, golden jubilee celebrations, and Mamta Agarwal, association president, Inner Wheel Clubs.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Chennai / by Staff Reporter / Chennai – February 12th, 2016
Each time Julie Wayne visited an Ayyanar temple with her camera, her viewfinder caught images of a vanishing ritual once prevalent across Tamil Nadu. It was a journey in search of diversity and colour through the rituals of the ancient cult of Ayyanar, the protector god many village dwellers have been honouring for centuries. Terracotta offerings in various sizes and shapes are part of the worship of Ayyanar. Julie has taken almost 12,000 photographs from various Ayyanar temples in her decade-old journey.
A photographer from France, Julie’s interest in a fading cult in Tamil Nadu deserves praise. What attracted Julie to Ayyanar was the illustrious god’s strong connection with the villagers through agriculture, art and craft. The villagers believe that Ayyanar protects them, their cattle and harvest. “Frequently hidden within sacred groves, the open shrines are home to remarkable and fantastic terracotta bestiaries. But there is an interesting story behind this art of pottery,” said Julie.
For each shrine, at the beginning of the summer a meeting takes place among a group of wise men to determine the date of the next festival honouring Ayyanar. “Once the auspicious date is decided, the potters for whom it is the hereditary charge begin to create the various clay effigies ordered by the villagers. These statues manifest the devotees’ request for protection or for the fulfilment of desires, and gratitude for wishes granted,” she said.
The sculptures consist of life-sized horses (Ayyanar’s mount), cows, elephants, dogs and snakes and small human-like figurines that represent the devotees themselves. All of these pieces are modelled, dried, fried, painted and finally decorated during elaborate celebrations, which often last two or three days. “Once the rituals that implore Ayyanar’s grace and give life to the terracotta offerings are completed, the pieces are placed in an outdoor shrine dedicated to the god. There they will stay, gradually worn by the sun and wind. And slowly, they crumble, like things bound to the cycles of nature, once again becoming earth and dust,” said Julie, who has even made a documentary on the potters.
Today, as many potters are busy with commercial terracotta making, many temples don’t get these sculptures. Many Ayyanar temples have dropped the idea of placing terracotta offerings, according to Julie. “Only a few temples follow the ritual these days. This is a dying art. I am happy that I could document it,” she said. A selection of 99 photographs has been exhibited at DakshinaChitra, after being displayed in Delhi, Bangalore and Thanjavur.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Chennai / M T Saju, TNN / February 09th, 2016
