Cost Effective Solution to save Coconut trees during forth coming water scarcity months due to El Niño : Olla Irrigation - Ancient Wisdom for Modern Droughts. 🏺 Echoes of Ancient Clay pot Irrigation Long before the term olla entered agricultural vocabulary, ancient Tamil farmers practiced remarkably similar methods. In Sangam‑era Tamilakam, clay vessels called “ māṇ paṇai ” or “kulam paṇai” were used to store and seep water near tree roots - especially for coconut, banana, and areca palms. These pots were often placed in earthen basins (thottam) lined with coir, husk, and leaf mulch, creating a natural moisture‑retention system. Inscriptions and temple garden records from regions like Pollachi, Thanjavur, and Madurai mention such paṇai neer vaḻi (pot‑water channels) as part of sustainable irrigation networks. This continuity of wisdom - from ancient Tamil pot irrigation to modern olla systems - shows how indigenous knowledge can guide regenerative farming in the...
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 friends during MHSS days
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.
We did not have access to camera during our +2 days at MHSS, so later created the memories of our routines using AI:
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.
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.
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