Greetings from Thulir! Hope all is well with you. We are happy to share what’s been happening at Thulir with you.
Pongal Celebration
The harvest festival, Pongal, is the most important festival celebrated in Sittilingi and Thulir. The celebrations this year were doubly special because the corona virus had put a stop to these celebrations the last two years!
Teachers and students worked hard for three whole days cleaning the entire school, applying cowdung on all the mud floors, painting the walls, making beautiful colourful kolams (designs/ rangoli) on all the available floors, dancing the traditional Kummi dances and cooking tasty pongal outside, and finally eating and savouring it together!
Village elder, Vellachi Ammal, was invited to teach traditional pongal songs!
Storytelling Workshop
All of us love stories and have nostalgic memories of stories told to us by grandparents or parents or aunts and uncles.These stories, while nurturing strong emotional bonds, not only entertained us but also educated us about life, relationships, and the art of living!
With the advancement of technology and social media storytelling has almost disappeared everywhere.
Kumar Shaw, an expert story-teller, has been cycling through the country on a nationwide mission to revive this and create awareness about the significance of storytelling. He visited Thulir in January and regaled the children with witty, timely, and fascinating tales. Under his skillful anchoring the children created their own story as a group about a dinosaur becoming the king of the jungle and illustrated it! It was fascinating to watch the story weave itself.
Senjikottai Trip
Completely unfazed by the blazing hot April sun, our 9, 10, and 11 year olds raced up to the top of the steep Rajakottai hill!
The teachers and students went on a day trip to the historic site of Senjikottai (mispronounced as Gingee fort by the English), which is around 115 km from Thulir. Dubbed “The Troy of the East” by the British, and deemed to be one of the strongest forts in the country, Senji has been owned by a parade of powers in its 900 year history — from the Cholas and Vijayanagar to Bijapur and Telugu Nayakas. It has seen Marathas scale its rock faces with the use of monitor lizards, according to legend; a Rajasthani ruler, Tej Singh, who became a Tamil folk hero known as Desing Raja; and an eight year clash between Marathas and Mughals which was the longest siege in Mughal history. And now it was the turn of our Thulir heroes and heroines to climb up the steep, narrow and winding steps to the twin hilltop forts, named the Rajakottai and Ranikottai by locals. The same steps that Mughals, Marathas, Europeans, and so many other armies had climbed before!
On the way back the group stopped at the Sathanur dam across the Thenpennai river and played in the park there. The children were also mesmerised by the crocodiles at the crocodile farm there!
Sports Days
How does one ensure that the excitement of a sporting event is not compromised while NOT giving too much importance to excessive competitiveness and winning and losing? That participation is given more importance than winning or losing?
This has been our constant focus at every Thulir sports event. This year, the children enjoyed two whole days of sports and games in February. This time we also invited students from the government school in Palakuttai and the Thulir Alumni to participate. Anjana from Asha Bangalore visited us with family and friends.
We included two co-operative games where one wins only if the whole team wins, or the entire team loses. For instance at Musical chairs as the number of chairs reduce after each round the participants have to still make sure that everyone gets to sit. Even if one person doesn’t manage to sit the whole group loses. We were amazed at how more than 15 children managed to sit on one chair!
“Teachers for Change” Workshops
As teachers, is it enough if we merely teach the 3 Rs? Is it adequate to just teach Math, Language, Sciences? Are we aware of the socio-political-economic structures and inequalities around us? Are we aware of what kind of society our forefathers, who created our constitution, dreamed of? Do we need to make our students aware of all this? Do we have a role in helping our students grow to become tolerant, caring, and socially responsible citizens and create a free, just, equitable society in the future?
With the help of the Barefoot Academy we organised four 3 day workshops for teachers from Marudam, Payir, Vanavil, and Thulir this year to gain an understanding of all this. We express our gratitude to BA for pioneering this initiative.
Government Approval Process
After 3 long years and countless trips to Dharmapuri and drawing and re-drawing our building plans to suit varying formats, we finally got the DTCP (Department of Town and Country Planning) approval for our school buildings. The process was delayed by the COVID lockdowns and the Tamil Nadu government changing the entire Application procedure halfway through these years.
Since we now have all the required certificates we re-applied to the Education Department for approval. The District Education Officer inspected our school on 26th April and gave his approval and forwarded our files to Chennai. We are awaiting our final approval from the capital.
Thanks to Ramkumar for patiently following this process through all these years!
The Sittilingi Run
A lively and meaningful event on February 5th which brought all of us — the Runner’s High group, Thulir, THI, SOFA, Porgai, and the Panchayat teams — together in a celebration of community, team spirit, and physical fitness!
Dr. Christy and Dr. Raja Durai set the tone for the day with an initial lively warm-up session! A total of 428 runners, both from Sittilingi as well as friends from Chennai, Marudam School, Thiruvannamalai, and Ananya School, Bangalore ran the 2k, 5k, or 10k races.
As the sun was sleepily trying to peep out from behind the blue mist-clad hills, the runners ran between the sugarcane, turmeric, and rice fields on both sides of the roads breathing in the misty, cool, clean air.
The age of the runners ranged from 4 to 70, and their attire varied from shorts to tracksuits to sarees! There were no prizes or mementoes. The joy of being and running together was prize enough! Ravi has captured the beauty of this event at >> Read more
and you can also visit Balaji’s site to read more about the event.>> Read more
Visitors and Volunteers
Mhaiiri McInnes from Austria visited in January. She demonstrated the Feldenkrais method of Awareness through Movement to children and teachers.
Seetha, Uma, Vinita, and Vinodhini — indigenous women from Gudalur doing BSc Social Work did their one month field placement here at Thulir. They taught their traditional music and dances to our students.
Vinod from Marudam School came often to conduct nature walks, birdwatching walks, and ecology classes.
Sakthi from MIDS, along with her daughter Samrutha, a class 10 student visited in March. Samrutha has written about her experience here:>> Read more
A Dying Art!
One of the most ecological, sustainable and thermally comfortable roofs is a thatch roof, made of thick bundles of grass. Thatching a roof is a highly skilled craft! Moreover, it is group work, that needs a full team of skilled artisans to do, and invariably involves everybody in the surrounding community in one way or another! We saw this for the first time 19 years ago when the roofs of Anu and Krishna’s house and the old Thulir buildings were thatched by a group of highly skilled thatch-layers from Alangayam and many of the locals who came to help them then were people who have stayed with us all these years since!
But in the years since, thatch roofs have become rarer and rarer, and the artisans who thatch these have almost vanished.
However, there is a silver lining to this, as recently Anu and Krishna’s 19 year old roof was re-thatched. Though we were not expecting to be able to work with as skilled artisans, through a stroke of luck we ended up finding a group of professional thatch-layers from the very same village of Alangayam! Work started at 7 am every morning and went on till 5 pm every day. Many adults and children from the community pitched in to help and we all worked and ate together! There was much laughter, conversation, team work and camaraderie! The tension, stress and the overpowering noise of heavy machinery that are pervasive when a concrete roof is built were completely absent here. It was an unforgettable experience!
Thank you!
Heartfelt thanks to all of you for recognising the value and authenticity of our work, and choosing to support Thulir’s continued growth and blossoming.
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