Reach in news -15th October Times of India

REACH has members who are vigilant of any damage happening on heritage and member Jayakumar, a teaching faculty of Kalakshetra was fast enough to inform us the heavy quarrying happening in and around Pudukkottai.

Dinamalar the Tamil vernacular was the fastest to respond to our call and published the article the next day. See here.

Times of India carried an article the next day . Thanks to our member Jayakumar who brought this to our notice, with his help we could appeal to the state minister for Archaeology, Shri. Thangam Thennarasu, in person (our PRO Chandra waited outside his office for almost 2 hours to deliver the letter in person) and gave news to these dailies.

Ironically, in the same page of Times of India, just below the Pudukkottai quarrying article, there is another article which says ASI is documenting all rock-cut caves. Thanks but the irony is the most bombed rocks are from Pudukottai and Madurai regions, which claims most number of caves to exist as documented by ASI!!

Reach in news -The Sunday Indian Tamil - September 2010

The Tamil edition of The Sunday Indian - magazine run in 14 languages by Shri. Arindam Choudary, has brought out appropriately the 20 September 2010 - 3 October 2010 edition as a 1000th year of Big Temple special edition, devoting most of the pages including the cover page for celebrating the 1000th year of consecration of the tanjavur Rajarajeswaram alias the Big Temple or the Brahadeeswara Temple.Those who can read Tamil enjoy! Other please excuse.

The cover has a moon lit Big temple with snippets of article titles at the left hand top where Dr T Satyamurthy's photo appears.

In page 13 - the Q&A session of our dear friend and photographer N. Thyagarajan who did the montage of the famous fresco paintings of Tanjavur temple for the ASI under the guidance of

Dr. T. Satyamurty, along with P.S.Sriraman appears;

Pages 26 to 46 are dedicated for publishing articles about the Big Temple;

in pages 35 to 37 Dr Satyamurthy elaborates how the temple withstood natural calamities and the technical aspects of the construction;

in pages 38 to 40 our epigraphy teacher S.Ramachandran solves with logic the titles conferred in various epigraphies on Raja Raja, especially the Kandalur Chalai Kalam Aruthu Aruzhiya...

In pages 42 and 43 our Dr Kudavoil Balasubramaniam spells the Dakshina Meru concept of the Big Temple and finally in

pages 44 and 45 describes in brief the beauty of the 1000 year old Fresco seco paintings of the great Chola.

I can feel th anxiety of the readers and here is the e-book of the Magazine given by the Sunday Indian on-line! Thanks a tonne for the publishers and courtesy/copyright of the article also lies with the Sunday Indian.

The Sunday Indian Magazine

Click on this week (இந்த வாரம்) and then you get the virtual e-copy. Just scroll the arrows given at the right hand bottom corner of the web page and you can read through the book fully.

REACH IN VAK September 2010

VAK which is also known as VOICE OF TEMPLES, a magazine run by the renowned Visa Balaji @ Chilkur Balaji temple trustee Soundarajan and his illustrious son Shri. Rengan fights for the upliftment of lives of temple priests as well as reports on any heritage conservation efforts.

They are a powerful media as far as Andhra is concerned and it was a pleasant surprise when Shri.Renganji contacted REACH to allow them to publish our Uttaramerur temple story published in THE HINDU dated 27.08.2010 again in VAK. Happily we agreed. This caught the attention of the young and energitic HR&CE commissioner of Andhra Pradesh Government and our founder Dr. T.Satyamurthy was invited to Hyderabad for discussing and taking his advice on renovation of dilapidated temples in Andhra and avoid another Kalahasti like catastrophe. The engineers and executive officers of all districts were called for in the meeting and our power point presentation on heritage conservation was well received.

The next move by the Commissioner was to request REACH to prepare a conservation manual which explains all types of conservation practices, to be followed by the engineers henceforth.

We are in the process of preparing the manual and this will become the rule book for the HR&CE engineers in A.P to follow. Indeed a positive step by any Government and proactive too. While blaming many a governments for negligence of heritage temples, we should give credits to the incumbent commissioner for his fast action and decision.

Hope other governments also take a leaf out of this move.. and tha

nks to Chilkur Rengaji for his help and now the Andhra chapter of REACH will also be started soon, with Rengaji and Vizag Dhivakar taking cue from the commissioner's positive move. Let REACH reach places!! Here is the view of the magazines cover page and inner liner page...