Pollachi

Despite the wrong reasons and news (Pollachi is most talked town in the media right now), Still I am proud that I am from  Pollachi.

So many wonderful people are from Pollachi. Nature, simplicity and people with true love is the composition of this wonderful town, Pollachi, as I know off. I went to elementary (AMS), middle (VHS), high school (MHS), undergraduate college (NGM) at Pollachi.  My parents, the town, wonderful schools, temples and my friends molded me. Parents guided me to work hard, never give up, be truthful and help others.
Teachers guided us in the school showing us what is fundamentally right. We were coed and was well taught how to behave with girls. The girls were nice to us, One example I can remember as an elementary kid was, I had a habit of biting the pencil and my classmate girl told me not to chew pencils, it is not nice and she sharpened it and made it look nice. Immediately I gave up that habit and still remember that incidence and feel happy about it. 

Pollachi -AMS Days

Viswadeepthi school was  very tight knit family and it gave us the world class fundamentals second to none and took us to next level to face the real world. 

Pollachi - VHS Days - First set

We were 18 of us in the First  set of the school and we all blossomed into Agriculturists, Business People, Doctors, Engineers, Scientists and Teachers. Even though we all scattered all over the World, still connected by Technology and communicate regularly. We did not stop there - one of the doctor friend requested to improve the poor children ward in a hospital and immediately the request was fulfilled by our group. I feel proud that we are in such position and our town molded us in a such a good way.

Next went to high school where we learned how to be street smart. With couple of years there at that school we got a clear picture how real world life is going to be. At that time  we explored, roamed Pollachi. Our focus was on cricket and movies. We were boys only school and had the opportunity to meet the girls only  in the tution center,  We knew our limits and treated them fairly too. They are also in various fields now and are successful. 

During Pollachi days we were playing for Mahalingapuram Cricket Club (MLCC). We had total fun playing for MLCC. We had players from all religions but we were all brothers. Wonderful MLCC cricket family life.

Successful MLCC team at beautiful Pollachi MHSS Ground

Then entered undergraduate college at NGM and the girls came again into our classrooms. Again we knew our limits. Our focus was again in movies , cricket and story books. These were the golden days of my life in Pollachi. all friends became one family. 

Pollachi NGM Days

When the girls thought we were going to cross the limits  they tied Rakhis and became sisters. Still now they are treated how a sister would be treated. we are all  in the whatsapp group. Again we wanted to create a model village and immediately NGMians chipped in and started the project. That's how we grew up in Pollachi. And again I feel proud that I am from Pollachi.

After Pollachi education went on to Coimbatore to complete Masters at PSG and MPhil at Bharathiar University. From there came to USA to do PhD in Environmental field and completed another Masters in Computer Science. Now I live in United States. Simultaneously my beloved Pollachi friends achieved their heights and went all over the World. Some of them ended in USA too. Whenever we meet we show our pride that we are from Pollachi. My brother went to Singapore and we were losing connection to the roots. We wanted to do something for our roots. That's when my brother went back to Pollachi to do Agriculture. Yes, we do Sustainable Organic Natural Agriculture at EA Farms. 

At  Pollachi - EA Farms

I have successfully became an Environmental Scientist and an Information Technologist and still share my knowledge to others and bring them up in life. And I am successful on that fronts. All these happened because of the environment that Pollachi gave me.

Not sure why the Golden land is now spoiled by some bad weeds. Not sure what went wrong. we can blame on so many things - Alcohol, technology used in bad ways, bad movies,  no respect for other gender, no proper guidance to youngsters, no tight families, no true friends  ( A true friend needs to stop a friend when he makes a wrong move). 

Our Pollachi - Agriculture Lands, Nature,  Wonderful people, Schools, Colleges, Friends and Family are still there. Helping tendency is still there. But now our beloved town is tainted with bad elements. But always we will overcome the evil.  Me and my friends with our education, experience and goodwill, will do our part and bring back the pride of Pollachi. 

Praying for that.

Update: October 2019:

Prayers seems to be answered. Lots of good Pollachi people are working towards cleaning the city water lake - Theppakulam. They all have joined together working for good cause, You can see the progress here at https://www.facebook.com/PollachiWaterBodiesReconstructionOrg/ . Wherever you are and if you want to contribute to the good cause, please do, it will bring back the pride to Pollachi. We all will be working together to make Pollachi, an environmentally friendly city for sure with these many supportive people.

Before and After Pollachi Theppakulam Cleanup

Water Quality Lab Result:

Kudos to the great volunteers who have done this great job of cleaning the pond.

Updates on Temple Theppakulam (Pond):

From Garbage Dumping Area:

To a Beautiful Clean Pond:

Kudos to team work by the great Pollachi Volunteers who made this possible and final touch by the Pollachi Municipality Government. Let us team and work towards more 

Green and Clean Pollachi.

mhss_highschool

I am an Alumni of Pollachi Municipal High School - MHSS, Great green environment with excellent cricket ground and a basketball court. Daily we used to go in bicycle to our high school in a group.  This is the entrance with both tall trees on both sides of the pathway. Our principal at that time was 

Mr. Nagaraj and for standin - Mr. Seetharaman, a great principal). He always come in tidy clothes 

( Tucked in shirt into pleated pant with a tie and shining shoes ) and have seen him tradional dhothi and white shirt. We also had unforgetable teachers. Physics (Mr. Krishnasamy), Chemistry (Mr. Muthuveeran), Zoology Madam (Ms. Saroja) and Botany (Mr. Jeyachandran). The clerks of the school were funny too. Coming from a convent school (10 years), this school made us street smart in just two years. We had bunch of diversified students and immediately became close friends.

This is the entrance to our class room - easy access from cycle stand. 
Our daily ride to highschool - Hercules 

Class room was well lit and had both doors always opened. From one door we can easily reach the back ground where we could access the basketball court and cricket ground easily. Again the opened door helped to bunk, escape the classes and walk through the broken compound walls to near by movie theatre ATSC ( Previously called Gopal). Have seen numerous movies in that theatre during high school.

MHSS Cricket Gound.

We had a very strict Physical education teacher Mr. Sankaran. Most of times he is very cool and sometimes he becomes a terror, He is very strict on Uniforms. If there is any glitch in the uniform he will punish us. He will push us to do physical activities. He also has a book of sports newpaper cutting and explain us about each cutting. Mostly it was about Pele - the brazil soccer player. He also taught us about baseball and its fielding positions and ask us questions about that. Some of us used to mostly cricket fielding positions we might answer incorrectly which irrated him and he would become mad and punish us.

 

Our Team MLCC (Maha Lingapuram Cricket Club) won many tournaments and matches at this ground. We always played matches using cricketing mats and the pitch was excellent for that. We have won several macthes in this MHSS GROUND.

Physics was enjoyable class and whenever he comes to class he will say - "Atmospheric condition is not at all good". When he asks do you hae any doubts and a friend would ask something that is not relevant to our syllabus such as - How can people live in moon - and he would be mad. His way of punishment is putting the attendance register on the head. Always had fun in Physics lab - circuit experiments, Tuning fork and several othe Physics experiments.

Chemistry was tough. As soon he comes to the class he starts write complex equation without much explanations. In between he ask us questions on the equation (esp. balancing it ) and if we could not answer he will say write the equation 10000 times  which gives us great shock. Finally after the class is over he would say "Divide the imposition by 100" and we would be happy. Even though the Lab experiments were interesting we were always late in writing reports and submiiting the record note. He would be very mad at that time.

Zoology and Botany were always interesting for me because I had drawing scientific images skill. Zoology madam was good to me and my friend, She even invited us for housewarming. She always caught the right bright students thinking they were the ones that are cheating in the exams. It was very funny to us. Botany teacher was experienced teacher and always gave tough scientific names for each and every plant on Earth and expected us to tell them immediately, which we failed and he would scold us sometimes uses filthy language too for his demeanour.

For zoology we had to submit insect boxes - we would hunt for butterflies, beetles, grasshoppers, bees and some unknow insects then fozzilize them, we fill a garment box and fill it with cotton and pin the insects in a tabular fashion with correct labels with their scientific names. Earned few bucks (Rs 10 per box) for making these boxes for others. Similarly for Botany we did herbarium sheets.

Maths was tough for me since I could not attend classes on Calculus sessions (Later had to learn for higher studies) during summer and it was completely Alien to me. Never ever tried to learn it then and passed the exam with the help of set theories ( which later helped me in Information Technology esp. in DATA Field). Maths was taught by two teachers - one was very experienced (Mr. Ramamoorthy) and the other one was new (Mr. Gnanasekaran). My friend helped me in the last minute to ace the high school maths exam.

Languages (Tamil - Thiru Krishnan Ayya and English - Mr. Nataraj - who rides an Enfield to school) were also taught by experienced teachers. We were always ready for Tamil class. It was a class that took away our stress. The class always was taught with lots of jokes and it was full of laughter. Contradicting to Tamil, English was a lullaby class. As he lectured we will all go to the sleeping mode because of the peanut jaggary balls we ate at the petty shop in front of the school during the interval. 

Most of us were going to Mr. Sheriff's tution for addtional learning. Mr. Ashok taught us biology there. It was fun for us there too and many stories to tell.

Trip to Topslip wildlife sanctuary and parambikulam with Physics master was great trip and brought every highschool mates together to one closeknit family. 

Some of us played during MHSS days played in our cricket team (MLCC). This particular photo is from MHSS days and we were the cup winners from the tournament played at MHSS ground.

We still team up to provide whatever we can to our roots.

We have become doctors, engineers, and researchers and scattered all over the World with great memories from Pollachi MHSS Highschool, still lingering in our minds.