My village and me

Chelakkara , the village to which I belong is in the Thalapilly thaluq of Trichur district , Kerala. It is a valley , which is fertile, pretty and rich. I am Tail speaking Kerala Iyer and we iyers used to live in Chelakkara Grammam. Though an agraharam, it was independent houses (called Otha Madam) . There used to be more than 100 iyer houses. These houses were bought or perhaps usurped by the Iyers from the Nairs of that area. My father was able to reel out names of the original Nair houses for each Iyer house. Most of the iyers of Chelakkara were abysymally poor. One of the iyers of Chelakkara fondly called "Institute Ramachandran" used to run a commercial institute to teach Short hand and typing. Equipped with this knowledge , iyers of Chelakkara used to reach Mumbai and get employment there. Another iyer belonging to Chelakkara used to run a hotel in Mumbai and he used to give lodging and boarding to these youngsters. Once employed, they all used to send monthly remittances to their parents. Slowly the poor iyer village vanished. Most of them preferred to settle down in Mumbai.
Chelakkara was a cosmoplitan village , those days. It has Tamil speaking Muslims called Rauthars in Pathu Kudi, Telugu speaking Nayakkars in Naykaa koodaram(they were expert well diggers), Tamil speaking Chettiars in Chetti Theruvu, a sprinkling of Kannada speaking Embranthiris besides, the huge malayalam population belonging to several castes. Dr.Anthony an LMP was the God to those living in Chelakkara village. Initially posted as a doctor in the Primary health Center, he adopted the village. He helped each and every house of Chelakkara by treating them initially free , and taking money when they got it.I hope to continue this blog , yet another day.

Introducing myself

I am from Kerala. I belong to a village called Chelakkara, which is in Trichur district of Kerala. I completed my intermediate from Sree Kerala Varma College Trichur in 1957. Then I completed my M.A. in Mathematics from Annamalai university in 1960. I then specialised in agricultural statistics in IASRI, New Delhi in 1963.
After 36 years of service as Head of the statistical departments of four different ICAR institutes I retired in the year 2000. During this time, I published 150 research papers and published three books. I also developed various information software for Horticultural farmers of South India.
In the year 2001, I completed my study and research on Kerala Iyers and started my web site www.keralaiyers.com. At this time I got interested in translation of Sthothras in to english. Till to date(12th JUly 2008) , I have translated 292 stotras in to english and these are available in my web site www.geocities.com/ramya475. From childhood, I was interested in telling stories to children. I further developed this in to a hooby and created the web site, http://rajathathacorner.awardspace.com . This web site also has my translation of Indian rhymes, my thought and adaptation of western rhymes to suit Indian children, stories from Gita, Puranas etc. In this bolg site, I am going to list out my toughts.Hope you will enjoy it.