Swaminathan, Vasudeva Kiran, Murugapandiyan and Jayasree
SUDHARSANAM
Pudukkottai
Dear friends
Greetings from Pudukkottai!
During the ��Irandam Yaththirai�� we had an opportunity to interact. Briefly the objectives of Sudharsanam was explained. We would like to describe in some detail about our proposed activities and please help us with your ideas.
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We had mentioned the main objectives for our project.
To offer opportunities, particularly to the younger generation, to get an exposure to our arts, culture and traditional knowledge. This is to be done through residential summer camps on the campus and through workshops in the villages.
Topics: Appreciation of arts, like dance, music, drama, painting, sculpture, temple architecture, literature, folk traditions, philosophical systems, heritage tours within the district and its immediate neighbourhood, etc.
To document the legacy of the district of Pudukkottai.
Outcome expected: Building a corpus of archival material in respect of Pudukkottai. Publish, in Tamil and English, authentic and affordable guide books, on monuments of the district, monographs on contribution of the district in various fields, like music, dance, temple architecture, literature, etc., and biographical sketches of distinguished personalities connected with Pudukkottai.
To set up a library to act as a resource centre in selected fields of South Indian arts and culture; collecting archival material on Tamil heritage, in general, and on contribution of Pudukkottai to Tamil culture, in particular.
The Campus
A 7-acre plot in Sathyamangalam, 14 km from Pudukkottai on the Pudukkottai-Thiruchy road is being developed into a residential campus with apartments and dormitories, library and lecture-activity rooms.
The area is also being developed into a theme garden reflecting, among others, the unique relation the Tamil culture has with nature. The heritage garden will comprise akam-puram gardens, Ayurveda-Siddha gardens, in addition to those trees which are not commonly found, like sandal, mahagony, kadamba, sacred trees of temples, etc.
An energy forest is also being grown in order to generate electricity, through gasification of biomass and through production of 'bio-diesel'.
We are hopeful of the campus being ready in about 8 months time.
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While we are at the planning stage, we thought we would be benefited by your suggestions.
Firstly please comment on our objectives. We anticipate one criticism, that we are over ambitious and are including too many topics in our summer camps. We have identified the topics which we though would be of interest. However the actual coverage would depend on the interests of the participants and the availability of resource persons.
Presently we are in a process of finalising a number of activities which we can take-up during the next one year. Apart from the initial organisation activities like establishing contacts with resources persons/experts/likeminded people and setting-up infrastructure facilities, we would like to take-up some other activities.
These proposed activities are of three kinds: heritage tours, retreats and summer camps.
Heritage tours: We plan to organise conducted tours within Pudukkottai district and also of the sites of importance around Pudukkottai. The later could include Tanjavur, Gangai-konda-chozhapuram, Darasuram, Thiruchi, Madurai and Chidambaram. These, we propose to be two to three days duration. In our opinion a good preview, through slide-shows, and suitable literature for reference later would add to the usefulness of the tours. We are in the process of preparing suitable literature, in both Tamil and English. In addition to the school children whose sensitisation is one among our social objectives, we plan to organise such tours for other categories of people also. This would be on commercial basis.
For example, we may attract those who come to Chennai during music season in December. Long week-ends, vacations are probable time for such tours.
Your comments and suggestions are invited on this. In particular suggestions on places to be included, number of days, cost-structure and suitable period would be useful.
Summer Camps: This is expected to be our main activity and we expect that this would help us becoming financially self-supporting. I have outlined the activities under this before. We propose to accommodate about 30 participants for each course. Since we are planning both apartments and dormitories small families would be able to participate. Planning of parallel programmes to suit different age groups are also being thought of.
The residential camps can be conducted three times in a year, one for people in Tamilnadu in May, for Tamils from North India in June and for NRI Tamils in July/August, coinciding with the vacation in the respective regions.
A serious thought may be given to this in all aspects of the programme. We need to know the methods of reaching the target population within the country and outside.
Retreat: This programme is somewhat in between the above two. Essentially a residentially programme of a few days, the activities may include, in addition to heritage tours, exposure to selected fields of Indian/Tamil heritage.
Please consider this and give your comments.
As I mentioned before your comments would help us tremendously. Specifically we need your suggestions on:
1.. How attractive the programmes are 2.. On the duration of 3 weeks 3.. On suggested contents 4.. On how they can be made attractive/appealing/useful 5.. On suitable publicity 6.. On fees structure
I have added a draft programme details below which may be consulted if need be.
May I suggest that you have discussion with the group and let us have the benefit of such exercise. I also suggest that those in Chennai may meet specifically with this as agenda. If we are informed in advance one of us can participate if needed.
With best wishes
Swaminathan and the Sudharsanam team
Pudukkottai
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SUMMER RESIDENTIAL CAMP - DRAFT PROPOSAL
(for discussion)
1. Objective:
To provide an opportunity for the public, particularly younger generation, to get an exposure to our herita