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On one cool morning last year, we some of the members of Marthoma Church, Karimba, gathered at the Parsonage. After coffee at 6 am we started for Palayur (an important pilgrimage center of Syrian Christians) in a hired Bus. Shortly before 8 am we reached, as planned, at the Ravi Varma orphanage at Trichur run by our church. We had free breakfast with the inmates, wash our plates ourselves and gave donations to the institution. And go around and saw the institution and talked to some of the inmates.

Ravivarma Orphanage
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Palakkad is an important Rubber growing district of Kerala. Karimba a village in Palakkad is famous for Rubber Nursery Last year, when I was at Karimba village of Palakkad, I visited a Co-operative Rubber processing and marketing society there. I am giving a detailed note as known to me as to how rubber is produced and processed for marketing. Some photos are also included to understand the process better.

History
Joseph Priestley, in 1770 in England, observed that a piece of the material from the tree was extremely good for rubbing out pencil marks on paper, hence the name “rubber”.
Many plants species produce natural rubber. But most plants are not economically viable to collect its latex. Source of natural rubber is limited to one species, namely Hevea brasiliensis.
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After retirement I moved from Calcutta to Palakkad. Now I am in Delhi. During the Last 20 years I have been to some of the Beautiful places in Palakkad District, there are numerous of them. During the last one year I have taken some photos of places some 10 Km from my house there. I am also enclosing a photo of a mini pooram festival in my village Karimba. In almost every village there are poorams like this. These poorams culminate in the very famous Trichur Pooram.

Pooram
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Oh! Calcutta is not dying. It is a City of Joy

At the fag end of April 2008 I visited Calcutta on my way to Silchar and took some photos of the magnificent Victoria Memorial Hall. This is at the end of the beautiful and vast Calcutta Maidan which is known as the Lung of Calcutta. People stroll at the Maidan to get the fresh air. Victoria memorial was built by the British thinking that they can build a better monument than Taj Mahal.

Victoria Memorial Hall
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