Giving a push to Kochi’s aspirations of becoming a state-of-the-art maritime and shipping hub, the prestigious Royal Institution of Naval Architects (RINA) OPENED its Kochi branch on Friday.
Chief Executive Officer of RINA Trevor Blakeley inaugurated the new branch, the second in India after Chennai, at a function at Sree Narayana Gurukulam COLLEGE of Engineering at Kolencherry.
Ship designer of international acclaim Antony Prince will be the chairman of the new branch.
RINA, according to Mr. Blakeley, is an international professional institution in existence for over 150 years whose members are involved in design, construction, repair and maintenance of marine vessels and structures in over 90 COUNTRIES across the globe.
The STUDENT community, he said, would be greatly benefited from association with the agency, which comes out with over 6,000 technical research papers and holds some 20 conferences every year.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kochi / by Special Correspondent / Kochi – April 18th, 2015
For years, scientists have been trying to find out the reasons behind autism and to formulate effective treatment methods.
In a breakthrough, for the first time, a team led by Rajesh Kanna of University of Alabama at Birmingham has used different types of brain scanning techniques to understand how the brain of people with autism is organised and connected.
“We studied the structure, function, chemical level, and connectivity of the brain of people with autism,” said Rajesh, who hails from Karivellur Panchayat in Kannur district.
In an e-mail interview with ‘Express’ from the US, he said that the importance of the study using multimodal neuroimaging-based classification would help to diagnose autism at an early age, when the brain is at formative stage and the intervention will be more effective.
Neuroimaging research will help in improving and supporting the diagnosis of autism, and enhance the pace of diagnostic process, he said. “The important aspect is its approach in using multiple brain imaging modalities. Such an approach emerges from the fact that behaviorally complex disorders like autism may entail complex neurobiology. Focal brain markers may not explain such disorders. And we may have our best bet in using multiple levels of measurements in order to identify biomarkers for this disorder,” he adds.
“The findings of this study provided a comprehensive picture of the complex brain pathology in autism spectrum disorders. In advancing the field, this study emphasises that the brain abnormalities in autism may not be confined to a single area, rather, it will be distributed across different areas at multiple levels and layers,” he said.
source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States> Kerala / by C P Sajit / March 30th, 2015
It was in 2012 that Portugal-based Russian painter Madina Ziganshina got to witness a couple of theyyam performances in Kannur. Its colour and religious fervor literally mesmerized her that the artist decided to do a series of paintings capturing the spirit of theyyam, which she likes to describe ‘God’s Own Dance’.
A series of 15 paintings are on display at Brushman’s Art Gallery here till March 10. These watercolours are, in a sense, an outsider’s curious impressions of a ritualistic performance, its vibrance and unearthly ambience.
“When I saw the performance where the theyyam jumped into the fire, I was astonished and even wanted to jump and perform along with him,” said the painter, who was enthralled by the transformation of man into god.
There were lots of researches involved before embarking on the mission, including watching theyyam performances over the last couple of months in various kavus here, said Ziganshina. “The light, the dynamism of movement and the mesmerizing environment in the night air literally ignited my creative spirit which was later translated into these compositions.”
“Though I was influenced by legends and Russian folklore as a child, which later influenced my works too, those experiences were all through books while here, I got the chance to come face to face with the God’s own dance,” said the artist, who is here on an invitation by Travel Kannur, a firm promoting cultural tourism.
Though Ziganshina’s works is a merger of different styles including impressionism, abstraction and hyper realism, here she prefers to stick to realistic figuration to express a ‘magically realistic’ performance.
But rather than the momentum and vigour of theyyam, it is a stillness that is reflected in most of these works. Some of them appear like the frames seen through the viewfinder of a camera.
Still, there is a beauty of craftsmanship in these compositions that are narratives of a colorful ritual with a soul of fire.
Ziganshina, who has exhibited her works in many countries including the US, France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Sweden, and Dubai, plans to take ‘God’s Own Dance’ to other towns in Kerala in the coming days.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Kozhikode / by P. Sudhakaran, TNN / March 07th, 2015
BLESSED FOOD The origin of the feast is associated with a legend and preparations involve the entire village folk. Photo: Thulasi Kakkat
The annual feast of St. Joseph in Kanamally is a century-old tradition that sees the entire village come together to prepare a meal for over one lakh people
Year after year, for the last 110 years, all roads, from far and wide, wind their way to Kannamaly on March 19. On this day the scenic village, hemmed in by backwaters on the east and the sea on the west, finds itself in the throes of a celebration that is both spiritual and communal. The annual feast of St. Joseph held at the village church, St. Antony’s, feeds on the day almost a lakh and fifty thousand, with a meal, a sadya, prepared by the village community and volunteers who come from different parts of the State to participate in the activity.
The origins of this communal cooking and feasting began in 1905 when the area was supposedly hit by a tsunami. It led to water logging and a subsequent cholera epidemic. Parish priest Fr. Joseph Kadanattuthara says that stories of the time are about rotting dead bodies lying around and of the hungry and the sick in each household.
It was then that a group of doomed men came to the church to prepare for impending death. The priest is said to have placated them informing that the next day was the death anniversary of Joseph, father of Jesus, and they should prepare for death for the next day. He cooked a sparse meal and shared it with the group, asking them to offer some to the dying in their homes. This food is supposed to have cured them all. From that day, March 19, 1905 the feast of St Joseph began.
In the early days the villagers cooked food at home and brought it to the church for sharing. This grew into communal cooking over the years with people joining from different places as volunteers. Many partake in chopping of vegetables, grinding spices, cleaning the premises, arranging firewood, making pickles and winding up after the feast. “There are people who grow vegetables to be used for this feast; a family brings 2,000 kilos of yam every year,” says Fr. Joseph adding that they plant yam only for this occasion. “Similarly people bring coconuts, rice and other provisions.”
The meal that consists of ulli curry, two vegetables, sambar and rice is prepared on firewood in very big vessels. Members of the 1,500 families that form the congregation of the church help in the preparations that begin a month before.
Provisions like sacks of rice, sugar for payasam, mounds of vegetables, oil, ghee and such begin to be stocked in the school in the church yard. Closer to the date women from nearby houses begin arriving to chop and prepare.
A day before, the fires are lit and cooking is done all night long. Maria Xavier, 50, a former teacher who now runs a ladies store says that the preparations for this large scale cooking are planned and undertaken by the ‘kalavara’ committee.
It begins on March 12 with women peeling up to 1,000 kilos of onions and storing them to be used in the curries. Nearly 500 kilos of bitter gourd and 800 kilos of mangoes are peeled, cut and stored.
Two days later the only work in the ad-hoc kitchen is grating and grinding coconut- thenga peera- and roasting it with chopped shallots, vazhathu. The next day the onion curry, and mango pickle are made and stored. On March 16 bitter gourd is cut and prepared. The following day is a No Work Day. On the night before the feast the fires are lit and rice is prepared in almost 20 vessels. The main mixed curry too is prepared. Cooking is halted at eight in the morning.
“As soon as the morning mass is over, at eight, the meals are served,” says Jaison Ezhuthaikkal, event coordinator, who has put up a 1, 20,000 sq ft canopy to accommodate the diners.
“In the olden days people sat on the floor and ate on banana leaves but now with increasing numbers arriving arrangements have changed. The ela sadya has given way in the last two years to a buffet,” says Maria. A relatively new addition is bottled payasam, sold at Rs. 50. This is done by a group from Tripunithura.
Antony Peko, 78, is a known name in the area. He heads a team of 10 assistants to cook, having mastered the art from his father. Sisters Barbara and Baby Pullamaserry, in their 70s, too have been associated with the food preparations for the last many decades.
Thettamma is another respected cook known for her skill at cooking huge quantities. Tom Edward whose family has been associated with the activity since its inception and is a patron of the church, remembers a year when it poured heavily, but the area around the church, where the feast was being cooked, served and savoured remained dry. Another hearsay story is of rice remaining fresh in a pit where it was buried as leftover.
“It is generally believed that the meal is blessed and that is the reason that draws people in hordes from distant places. It’s faith that brings them,” says Maria whose house becomes an open house. Last year she had 45 people staying at her house, not all known to her. Her neighbours too open their homes to strangers. “Balconies and verandas of every house in this area hosts visitors who come in groups. This is tradition,” she affirms.
In its century-old history food has never run short. It is cooked manually right through the day and night. By early evening if the curries begin to get over, fresh parippu curry is prepared. This goes on late into midnight, “by which time everyone is tired.”
“But we wake up fresh next morning satisfied that so many people ate a blessed meal,” says Maria.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Features> MetroPlus / by Priyadershini S / Kochi – March 18th, 2015
The twelve final year students of Oriental School of Hotel Management in Kerala who made the longest puttu.
A world record was achieved by making the longest puttu in the world of 18.2 feet, by twelve final year students of Oriental School of Hotel Management, Lakkidi, Wayanad, Kerala. It was held on March 16th, 2015 at 3.00 pm in the campus of the institution. The longest puttuwas made as per the guidelines and specifications of the Guinness World Records.
Students standing next to their creation, the longest puttu in the history of puttu in Kerala.
The twelve final year students who etched their names in the World Record attempt are Ms. Syama. M, Ms. Kavya Varghese, Mr. Akhil. B, Mr. Sivajith. S, Mr. Akshay Jain, Mr. Nithin George, Mr. Yadav Gurunathan, Mr. Jobu Ebin, Mr. Ebin Albert, Mr. Umesh. R. Nair, Mr. Jishnu. P. R and Mr. Mohammed Saif, all final year Hospitality Management students under the able guidance of Mr. K. C. Robbins, Principal of Oriental School of Hotel Management.
Puttu is an authentic Kerala breakfast dish of steamed cylinders of ground rice layered and blended with grated coconut. The ingredients for making the longest Puttu were 20 kg of ground rice flour, 15 grated coconuts, 15lts of water, salt, and a special equipment mould of aluminum was meticulously designed by the institution to prepare the longest puttu for the record breaking event. The longest puttu weighted 31.87kg.
Twelve final year students of Oriental School of Hotel Management in Kerala have managed to set a new Guinness World Record by steaming up the longest puttu.
The students took an hour and 15 minutes to prepare the world’s longest puttu and this is the result of days of relentless hard work and detailed planning. The Oriental School of Hotel Management is managed and owned by Malabar Hotel Management and Catering Promotion Trust—a charitable Institution founded by the visionary and social icon—Dr. N. K. Mohammed, the guiding force and inspiration behind the challenging event.
Earlier in 2006, the students of this institution had made a ten feet long puttu by using 10 coconuts and 26 kg of powdered rice in a specially designed 12-foot-long aluminum mould which took one-and-a-half hours to be cooked. (Refer: Wikipedia- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puttu).
The world’s longest puttu being examined at the Oriental School of Hotel Management in Kerala.
The world record attempt by the students of the institution has surpassed their own previous record, and will be appropriately certified and documented by the Guinness World Records. All the documents and supporting evidence have been sent to the Guinness World Records for appropriate verification and certification.
source: http://www.food.manoramaonline.com / On Manorama / by Correspondent, On Manorama / Home> Food> Foodie / Monday – March 16th, 2015
Tourism Secretary G. Kamala Vardhana Raoand Suman Billa, Joint Secretary in the UnionTourism Ministry, receiving the silver prize for Kerala Tourism at the Golden Gate awards in Berlin on Thursday./ The Hindu
‘The Great Backwaters’ campaign of Kerala Tourism has bagged the silver prize at the Golden Gate awards at the Internationale Tourismus-Börse Berlin (ITB-Berlin) – 2015, the world’s leading travel trade event.
The silver prize at the Das Golden Stadttor (Golden Gate) awards in the multimedia campaign category was presented to Kerala Tourism at the German capital on Thursday. Tourism Secretary G. Kamala Vardhana Rao, who is leading the delegation, and Suman Billa, Joint Secretary in Union Tourism Ministry, received the prize.
Presented every year at the ITB-Berlin for the last 14 years, the Golden Gate awards, dubbed the Oscar in tourism communication, are considered the ultimate recognition in the field.
Conceptualised by Kerala Tourism’s creative and marketing agency Stark Communications, the campaign won the Golden Gate Gold Prize in the print category at the ITB-Berlin last year. The campaign was noted for its use of aerial photography on a wider scale covering the backwaters as a single destination.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Thiruvananthapuram / by Special Correspondent / Thiruvananthapuram – March 07th, 2015
If I say the idli was brought to southern India by Arab settlers, it could raise hackles, especially among South Indians. But the truth cannot be suppressed. References to the modern way of making the idli appear in Indian works only after 1250 CE.
K.T. Acharya, the food historian, speculates that the modern idli might have originated in the region that is now Indonesia, which has had a long tradition of fermented food. According to him, cooks employed by the Hindu kings of the local kingdom may have invented the steamed idli there, and brought the recipe to India during the period 800-1200 CE. But this theory is being questioned by modern food historians such as Lizzie Collingham, Kristen Gremillion, Raymond Grew, Makhdoom Al-Salaqi (Syria), Zahiruddin Afiyaab (Lebanon). References available at the Al-Azhar University Library in Cairo also suggest that Arab traders in the southern belt brought in the idli when they married and settled down in those parts. Now the question is: how did that happen? It is known that Arab traders used to come to the southern coast for trade, and that pre-dated even the advent of Islam. The first mosque outside the Arab peninsula was erected by Arab settlers who came here as traders.
The Arab settlers were strict in their dietary preferences; many of them came here when Mohammed was still alive and they were neo-converts to Islam from Paganism. They insisted on halaal food, and Indian food was quite alien to their palate. To avoid all such confusion regarding what is halaal orharaam in food, they began to make rice balls as it was easy to make and was the safest option available. After making the rice balls, they would slightly flatten them and eat with bland coconut paste (Encyclopaedia of Food History, edited by Collingham and Gordon Ramsay of Britain, Oxford University Press, and Seed to Civilisation, The Story of Food, by Heiser Charles B, Harvard University Press, 1990). Later it was improved upon, and from the 8th century onwards, the idli in its modernavatar came into existence.
sumitmaclean@hotmail.com
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Opinion> Open Page / by Sumit Paul / February 01st, 2015
Union Minister for Agriculture, Radha Mohan Singh, will inaugurate the 51st Asia Pacific Coconut Community (APCC) session at Hotel Crowne Plaza here on February 2. The meeting will review the global coconut situation and hold deliberations on specific issues in the sector. It will evolve appropriate policy decisions with a view to making inroads into the development of trade in coconut and coconut products between the member countries, a press release issued by the Coconut Development Board said.
The APCC is an intergovernmental organisation under the aegis of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP). The organisation has 18 coconut-producing member countries.The APCC member countries account for 90 per cent of the world’s coconut production and export of coconut products, the release said.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Kochi / by Special Correspondent / Kochi – January 29th, 2015
A prototype of a fuel-efficient car, developed by mechanical engineering students of the Government Engineering College, Barton Hill, has been selected for the International Fuel Efficiency Contest, to be held from February 26 in the Philippines.
College Principal B. Anil said the car could give mileage of 200 km per litre. The technology was developed with the support of Kerala State Council for Science, Technology and Environment under the Technology Development and Adaptation Programme. The innovation was made by Bibin Sagaram, Ronith Stanley and Vishnu Prasad S., all in their sixth semester, with guidance of faculty members Santhosh Kumar and Anver Sadath.
The college was the only one selected from the State for the International Fuel Efficiency Contest, named Shell Eco Marathon. The contest would see participation of 120 teams from 16 countries, a press release said.
Prototype developed by students of Barton Hill engineering college.
source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> News> Cities> Thiruvananthapuram / by Staff Reporter / Thiruvananthapuram – January 15th, 2015
The Kafla Inter-continental’s 10th International Writers’ Festival and Indian Ruminations literary festival will begin at Gandhi Smarak Nidhi, Thycaud on Saturday.
The theme of the festival is ‘Vasudhaiva Kudumbakam’ with focus on world peace and literature. The festival is jointly organized by India-Inter-continental cultural association, Chandigarh, Indian Ruminations, Kerala Gandhi Smarak Nidhi and Shruti-the School of Music, Guwahati.
The festival will begin with a tribute to the kids who were shot dead at a school at Peshawar in Pakistan. Candles will be lit at Gandhi Smrithi Mandapam at 6.30pm to spread the message of peace.
The festival will feature discussion on book reviews, meet the author sessions, poetry symposium, paper presentations and seminars on contemporary and Indian styles of writing.
Poet Puthussery Ramachandran will inaugurate the festival at 10am on Saturday.
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / Home> City> Thiruvananthapuram / TNN / December 27th, 2014
its Kochi branch on Friday.
