Over 4000 Students Participate in 'Aadi Perukku' Celebration at Dr MGR Janaki Women's College
During the celebration, students participated in the 'mulaipari' worship, carrying earthen pots filled with sprouts from nine different types of grains and legumes. The girls floated lamps in a small pond, in a symbolic reenactment of the traditional practice typically performed in rivers. They enjoyed 'chitrannam', which included different varieties of rice such as lemon rice, tamarind rice, and coconut rice.
To add to the festivity, students performed traditional folk dances during the occasion and included 'Devarattam,' 'Karakattam,' 'Puliyaattam,' 'Oyilattam,' 'Sakkaiyaattam,' 'Poikaal Kuthiraiyaattam,' 'Mayilattam,' and Dance Drama. Special children also performed a dance, and students from Agaram took part in the occasion. Altogether it was a spectacular sight and replication of celebrations indigenous to villages.
'Preserving our tradition and knowing our roots is important for human race to progress and leave in peace. Celebrations like this will help younger generation know our 5000-year-old tradition and pass on it to future generation. This is our little attempt towards preserving the Tamil culture. Also, the 'sandhai' concept with stalls fully managed by students will help nurture their marketing and entrepreneurial skills' said Dr. Kumar Rajendran, Chairman, Dr. MGR Janaki College for Women.
The event also featured experts discussing the social, cultural, and environmental significance of Aadi Perukku, as well as traditional practices, music, and dance forms of Tamil culture.
For more details, please visit: www.mgrjanaki.ac.in (Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with Newsvoir and PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.).
This is an auto-published feed from PTI with no editorial input from The Wire.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Indian Express
5 hours ago
- Indian Express
In Maharashtra port, ship waits to be sunk, start new life as artificial reef
AT THE Vijaydurg port, a natural harbour in Maharashtra's coastal Sindhudurg district, an 81-metre-long piece of naval history lies still against the blue of the Arabian Sea, awaiting its second innings. INS Guldar, a decommissioned Navy warship, will soon be deliberately sunk — or 'scuttled' — to breathe new life into its metal bones, transforming it into an artificial reef and an underwater tourist attraction. Though scuttled ships have been used to create artificial reefs elsewhere in the world, this is the first such attempt in India. 'The idea behind this project is to develop tourism in Sindhudurg. When the ship is submerged, it will gradually form an underwater reef that attracts various kinds of fish. Once that happens, people from all over the world, especially avid scuba divers, will come to the district,' says an official of the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporat-ion (MTDC) who is associated with the project. Home to MTDC's Indian Institute of Scuba Diving and Aquatic Sports (IISDA), Sindhudurg, 120 km from Goa, has been a training centre for scuba diving enthusiasts for over a decade. Had all gone according to plan, INS Guldar would have been scuttled in April. Officials said its scuttling was postponed in view of tensions between India and Pakistan after the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam. An official at the Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited, the government-run firm responsible for the scuttling, said the process was delayed further due to the early arrival of monsoon in Maharashtra. 'Too much wind or rough seas can topple the ship, which means it won't go down as planned. We are waiting for a lull in the monsoon (to carry out the scuttling),' the official adds. The ageing INS Guldar, a Kumbhir-class landing ship designed for amphibious warfare and capable of beach landings, was once part of India's peacekeeping mission in Sri Lanka, combating attacks from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Tamil separatist group, across the beaches of Jaffna and Trincomalee in the island nation. The plan to acquire a ship for scuttling took off in December 2023, when the MTDC hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, then Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and then Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis in Sindhudurg on the occasion of Navy Day. Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi, who was then the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Naval Command, was also in attendance. The MTDC is learnt to have asked Admiral Tripathi for a decommissioned ship as a 'token of gift' to the state tourism department so that it could be turned into an 'underwater museum and artificial reef' at Sindhudurg. The Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation hopes to transform INS Guldar into an underwater tourist attraction. Scuttling is usually a wartime tactic involving the deliberate sinking of a vessel — in case of an emergency or to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. On November 26, 2024, the Union Finance Ministry green-lit the project, followed by a nod from the Maharashtra government on December 19, 2024. On February 21, 2025, the Navy handed over INS Guldar to the MTDC on an 'as is where is' basis at Karwar in Karnataka. Built at Poland's Gdynia Shipyard, INS Guldar was commissioned into the Indian Navy nearly four decades ago, in 1985. It was first based in Visakhapatnam, where it was used for amphibious warfare, transferring troops and equipment and for disaster relief operations. In 1995, it joined the Andaman and Nicobar command, where it served until its decommissioning on January 12, 2024, according to a statement by the Navy. The underwater museum-cum-artificial reef project is estimated to cost Rs 78 crore. The Centre will bear nearly 60% of the total cost and the state government the rest, said an MTDC official. According to the Detailed Project Report (DPR) accessed by The Indian Express, the Sindhudurg site will have a carrying capacity of 2,773 divers daily, spread over six diving sessions in an eight-hour operational period. The MTDC expects at least 71,000 tourists to visit the site in the first year, with the figure projected to go up to 1.10 lakh within a decade. Talking about the underwater museum-cum-artificial reef project, an official said every ship has a scuttling plan that the captain follows to deliberately sink the ship – usually 'in case of an emergency or to prevent it from falling into enemy hands'. The process of scuttling, he said, follows the Archimedes principle, which states that the buoyant force keeping an object afloat is equal to the weight of the water the object displaces. Simply put, for a ship to sink, it must be filled with water to achieve negative buoyancy. 'To achieve that, the ship's sea chest (a compartment built into the hull below the waterline) will be opened to flood the engine room. The front section will also be flooded simultaneously in a controlled manner,' the official says, adding that the process will take up to 10 hours. According to the DPR, the ship, which has been stripped of all pollutants that may harm marine life, will be sunk to a depth of nearly 30 metres. Once submerged, INS Guldar, which has a flat bottom, will simply sit on the seabed, around 3 km from existing scuba diving sites near Malvan and Tarkali beaches or around 15 km off the coast of Sindhudurg, near the Vengurla Rocks in the Arabian Sea. The DPR states that non-certified divers who have completed pool training will be allowed to dive down to a depth of 12 metres; certified divers up to 18 metres, which will give them access to the middle parts of the ship; and advanced divers to the deepest part of the ship, including the hull and the seabed. For non-divers, the MTDC plans to acquire a 24-seater submarine, offering tourists a 20-minute panoramic underwater view of the shipwreck. To enhance employment prospects in Sindhudurg, the MTDC plans to train locals in scuba diving, boat handling and as tourist guides. If successful, this could become India's first operational submarine tourism experience. Gujarat had announced a similar project at the Bet Dwarka island in 2023. While the scuba diving plan is expected to take off as soon as the ship is scuttled, experts say it could take a year or more for a reef to 'fully establish and function as essential habitat'. Alex Fogg, Natural Resources Chief of Florida's Okaloosa County in the United States, says that while fish appear 'almost immediately', the formation of an artificial reef is dependent on a number of factors – from the size of the vessel to the depth at which it is sunk, and its proximity to another reef. 'Larger, more complex vessels in shallower waters tend to establish more quickly,' Fogg explains. 'That's not to say smaller or deeper reefs aren't beneficial, they are just a different community.' Okaloosa County deployed its first artificial reef off Destin-Fort Walton Beach in 1976. Today, it hosts over 500 artificial reefs created from concrete structures, old bridge materials, military equipment, and decommissioned vessels. Marine biologist Vardhan Patankar too says that while the sunken ship could still make for a good scuba diving site since 'it will attract fish and a variety of associated invertebrates', whether it will be a viable reef with diverse composition is debatable. He says, 'An artificial reef is created when free-flowing larvae from a parent reef find another hard substratum (a layer of something, like rock or soil, below another layer). When that happens, they settle and thrive.' Patankar explains, 'Larvae can stay alive for a day and usually settle where their parents are. So, they are not going to come all the way from Angria Bank (a natural reef over 100 km away from Sindhudurg) to this site. They will most likely come from Sindhudurg, where the species composition is low.' Sonal Gupta is a senior sub-editor on the news desk. She writes feature stories and explainers on a wide range of topics from art and culture to international affairs. She also curates the Morning Expresso, a daily briefing of top stories of the day, which won gold in the 'best newsletter' category at the WAN-IFRA South Asian Digital Media Awards 2023. She also edits our newly-launched pop culture section, Fresh Take. ... Read More


News18
14 hours ago
- News18
Train coaches uncouple near Karnatakas Shivamogga, major accident averted
Karnataka, Aug 6 (PTI) A major accident was averted near the Shivamogga railway station after six coaches of the Talaguppa-Mysuru Intercity Express got uncoupled and came to a halt on the Tunga river bridge on Wednesday evening. The train, comprising 16 coaches, had departed from Talaguppa and was en route to Mysuru when the incident occurred, railway authorities said. Just a short distance from the Shivamogga station, six coaches detached from the rest of the train due to a technical fault. While the front portion continued moving ahead, the rear coaches came to a halt on the Tunga bridge, triggering panic among passengers, authorities added. view comments First Published: August 06, 2025, 20:45 IST Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.


News18
14 hours ago
- News18
UKs Imperial War Museum collects Indian stories from World War II
London, Aug 6 (PTI) Britain's Imperial War Museums (IWM) has launched a major collections project entitled 'India's War', inviting members of the public to share stories and memorabilia relating to Indian experiences of serving in and living through the World War II. By the end of the war in August 1945, the Armed Forces from the Indian subcontinent were the second largest fighting force drawn from Commonwealth nations, after Britain. According to IWM, 89,000 South Asian military personnel gave their lives fighting on almost every battle front Britain was engaged in, with 28 Indian armed forces personnel awarded the Victoria Cross – the highest award for gallantry in action. 'While IWM has significant film and photography collections documenting the Indian contribution to the Second World War, these are often unable to fully convey the experiences of the war at an individual level," said Adrian Kerrison, Senior Curator Second World War and Mid-20th Century at the IWM. 'This collecting project is an opportunity for IWM to reach out to our audiences to ensure that these powerful personal stories – significant for our understanding of the consequences of the Second World War in India and the UK – are properly represented within IWM's collections," he said. The curator said India's War, which went live recently, is aimed at building IWM's collections and strengthening relationships with South Asian communities through the conversations that it will generate. One lesser-known story already in IWM's collection is that of Pilot Officer Sayanapuram Duraiswamy Thyagarajan, known to his fellow fighter pilots as 'Tiger' Rajan. Born on India's eastern coast in 1918, Tiger volunteered for the Royal Air Force (RAF) and was posted to 263 Squadron as a fighter pilot. He was killed in action at the age of 26 while attacking German ground targets in the Falaise Pocket engagement during the Battle of Normandy in 1944. His headstone, maintained by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), is written in Hindi, English and French, and reads: 'This Hindu Airman is Honoured Here". 'The 'India's War' collecting project seeks to gather more personal stories of service members like Tiger Rajan while also uncovering new civilian perspectives. The aim is to add more under-represented voices to IWM's collections, documenting South Asian experiences on both the fighting and home fronts," IWM said. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and 'India's War' collecting project is aimed at highlighting the immense contribution made by members of the Armed Forces from pre-Partition India during colonial rule. The aim is to showcase how the events impacted people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka by broadening the scope of IWM's collections, as well as inform and shape future programming. IWM, based in London and four other branches across the UK, is inviting people to share a story, object, photograph or document directly connected to a South Asian civilian or service member's experience of World War II through its website PTI AK ZH ZH view comments First Published: August 06, 2025, 20:15 IST Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.