Engineering Colleges everywhere

In Tamil Nadu alone, there are about 250 engineering colleges. The state has a population of about 65 million. The number of science and arts colleges and polytechnics will be even higher. Around the mid 1980s there were about 10-15 engineering institutions. But why this sudden explosion? It appears that there was a market for education - an engineer or a doctor was a status symbol and many Indian cricketers were engineers. After the government relaxed the norms for private engineering colleges, there was a boom and entrepreneurs just lapped it up. But hear some horror stories in the admission and other procedures(!).

Above are photos of NT parliament and Supreme court buildings in Darwin.

Newton is to blame

David who runs a fun blog mentioned about my blog and thanks to him I seem to have more hits through his readers visiting my blog. I hope to keep updating the blog more often.

David had mentioned about the number of things he would defy especially if they came from the NZ government and other self interest or appointed bodies. Whereas here he can fully feel at home as every rule or legislation is broken by many citizens. But life goes on without much hassles. Is there a sense in all these chaos. For example, the government here in all hopes of reducing head injuries legislated helmets for two wheelers. However, women protested that their hairstyle and flowers in their hair were wasted because of helmets. Later men protested that they are likely to lose hair because of helmets. So the Government rescinded the decision since everyone, well almost, broke the rule. Civil disobedience, if you like. The government has again brought it in and I am told that the pillion riders have been exempted. I do not know if the rule is in place since no one is wearing helmets including the police. The other day I saw a Westerner wearing a helmet while riding a push bike and what a spectacle he was.

The lorry had taken a fall while taking a right turn at a very small roundabout. The lorry was laden with sand and Radhesh's theory is that the sand moved to the left side and increased the centrifugal force. Well, he is right but I blame Newton for inventing gravity. Look at the tyres as smooth as an ice hockey surface.

Thavil Teacher

Radhesh learns to play Thavil at the Government Music School. Radhesh recorded the music played by his teacher. I found his teacher to be very competent and confident. He had a way with his students and well respected. Radhesh has learnt his basics fairly quickly. Enjoy the beat.

Kaalai Kadir

I wrote a few posts ago about Radhesh appearing in the local newspaper. Since I do not have a scanner, Mahima suggested that I just take a picture of the paper. I wasn't sure, but I have been wrong. These days, with high resolution cameras, this is all too easy.

Our Flute Hero Sivaji

Mr Sivaji teaches Radhesh to play the Indian flute. He also runs an orchestra called Hero orchestra playing mainly bollywood music and without a doubt he is the Hero.

Radhesh and Mr Sivaji get along very well and they learn from each each other. Radhesh tantalises him with his mobile phone operating skills.

Mr Sivaji is a very good player on the flute. He learnt to play the flute on his as his father was also a flute palyer. We like his music. For us he is the hero and here is a short clip from his music.

Coconut oil

Interesting part about living in a rural area is that we get to produce stuff we normally buy in the supermarket. This time it was coconut oil. We have about 6 coconut trees in our garden producing more than 500 coconuts this season. We removed the kernals from about 40 coconuts. It is not easy to remove the kernals and I will leave it for another day.

The kernals were cut into pieces and dried in the sun for 4 days. The kernels filled a 12 litre bucket. It was crushed and pressed in a local mill. This mill had a single electric motor powering several machines and operated by one woman. Babu collected about 2.5 litres of coconut oil while Radhesh took all the pictures.

The best part of the extraction process is that it is free but we had to leave to coconut cake after the oil extraction which is used as feed for the cattle.

Vimala's kolam!

Vimala produced this beautiful kolam. A kolam is a beautuful decoration made in front of the house mainly in the state of Tamil Nadu. This decoration is produced daily and made of either rice flour or quartz powder. However, on this occasion she did this for a function at her office.

sivan malai 2

I wrote about howling winds in my previous blog. We took some videos on Radhesh's phone. I researched a bit around the internet to convert MP4 to a format that can be reasonably published. The quality isn't great, but you will get the idea about the wind. I will try and get better with my research on codecs and players.

Sivan malai

Sivan malai means Siva's mountain.

Indians have this this habit of "finding" gods in difficult to reach places. But there is an advantage. Most places are picturesque and, frequently, on top of mountains.

Sivan malai is about 40 kms from Erode and situated on a reasonably tall mountain. The whole mountain was covered with beautiful acacia trees (I think it is right. The thorny trees had an umbrella like foliage). There were a number of peacocks on this mountain. A blessing in disguise having temples on mountains - most of the natural surroundings are generally left alone.

On top of the mountain, the monsoon winds were howling and the feeling of nice moist, cold and high speed winds on me was great.

How to uproot a tamarind tree

One can pull or lift the tree using an earth moving equipment, dig the earth around the tree or...... Oh, well, Iam running out of ideas.

Not so this bus driver. Who decided to hit it at high speed and completely uprooted the tree as in the photo. I saw the bus was badly damaged and I even suspect that someone was killed in the accident. A few kilometres up the road a lorry had targetted another tamarind tree. Yesterday was a bad day for tamarind trees.