Five years ago, Sellur K Raju, the former Tamil Nadu Minister for Cooperatives, came up with an ingenious idea to curb water loss due to evaporation at Tamil Nadu’s Vaigai dam.
The officials of the Public Works Department, under the guidance of the minister, undertook the task of covering a portion of the dam with thermocol sheets worth ₹10 lakhs to curb water loss due to evaporation.
Minister Sellur K. Raju said he got the idea from a source. It involved using thermocol sheets, worth ₹ 10 lakhs, to cover a portion of the dam to curb water loss due to evaporation.
So, five years ago, on April 21, 2017, Minister Sellur K. Raju and the officials of the Public Works Department tried to cover a portion of the dam using thermocol sheets.
The minister invited the press to the Vaigai dam, located 67 km away from Madurai, to view his breakthrough technique to save water.
As the minister set the experiment in motion by placing a few sheets over the waterbody, strong winds swept the sheets away.
Tamil Nadu Cooperative Minister Sellur K Raju places thermocol sheets at Vaigai dam
Undeterred, the minister directed the PWD officials to spread the thermocol sheets deep in the water using an Indian coracle (Tamil: பரிசல்). But, wind washed them ashore within a few minutes, leaving the minister and other officials red faced.
K. Veera Raghava Rao, the Collector of Madurai, said they would hereafter adopt different methods to save water. Rao also said that they used thermocol because it is non-polluting. But, Mr. Rathnam, a scientist, says thermocol is non-biodegradable and can harm fish when it breaks into smaller pieces.
The public and social media threw brickbats at the minister for his failed experiment that earned him the moniker “Thermocol” Raju.
I am now 82 years old. My memory is failing. I can’t recall the names of people I knew when I was young, but I do remember the household items we used then.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, soap was the most common laundry detergent. My mother used Lever’s yellow Sunlight soap to wash our clothes. At that time, powdered soap was not manufactured, so my mother never had the chance to use it.
For bathing, we used Lux, Rexona, and Mysore Sandalwood soap, and we washed our hands with Lifebuoy soap.
Except for my father, everyone in the house used Colgate Dental Cream. My father preferred Forhan’s toothpaste. From 1950 to 1952, I was a boarder at St. Mary’s College in Chilaw, Sri Lanka. My father then bought me Kolynos toothpaste.
For brushing our teeth, everyone in the house used Colgate Dental Cream except my father. He preferred Forhan’s toothpaste. From 1950 to 1952, I was a boarder at St. Mary’s College in Chilaw, Sri Lanka. My father then bought me Kolynos toothpaste. toothpaste.
Colgate Toothpaste
A depiction of William Colgate (1783–1857) in his later years, drawn in 1881
William Colgate (January 25, 1783–March 25, 1857) was born in Hollingbourne, Kent, England. In 1804, Colgate went to New York City, where he worked as an apprentice in a soap boiler. He learned the trade by watching the methods practiced by his employer.
In 1806, Colgate established a starch, soap, and candle business in Manhattan, New York. He named it William Colgate & Company, which later became the Colgate-Palmolive Company.
Colgate’s Ribbon Dental Cream in 1920s
Colgate’s oral hygiene products were first sold in 1873, sixteen years after the founder’s death.
Colgate Dental Cream with Gardol in 1950s
Colgate-Palmolive is a global leader in oral, personal, and home care products. It manufactures and sells toothpaste, mouthwash, dental floss, and toothbrushes.
According to Dun & Bradstreet, the annual revenue of the company as of December 31, 2022 (12-month period) was US$17.97 billion.
Forhan’s Toothpaste
Dr. Richard Joseph Forhan (1866–1965), a graduate of the Denver School of Dentistry, practiced in Cripple Creek, Colorado. In 1913, he moved to New York, where he began manufacturing dentifrice under his name. He developed Forhan’s toothpaste, foamless and not sweet, as a prescription to treat pyorrhea (also known as periodontitis), a polygenic disease that affects the oral gums and causes bleeding and tooth loss. It was the first mass-produced toothpaste to be sold in tubes.
In 1929, Zonite Products Corporation in New Brunswick, N.J., bought Forhan’s firm.
Forhan’s toothpaste later entered India when US multinational consumer goods company Colgate ruled the toothpaste market.
Marketed as a product “created by dentists,” Forhan’s established itself as the country’s first commercial fluoride toothpaste.
Kolynos Toothpaste
Newell Sill Jenkins (1840–1919)
Kolynos is a line of oral care products created by Newell Sill Jenkins in 1908.
Jenkins developed and improved porcelain enamel, thus making a composition of porcelain paste into porcelain inlays, dental crowns, and bridges and the associated processing equipment.
In 1890, Willoughby D. Miller set up the pioneering and still valid theory that bacteria of the oral flora degrade carbohydrates into acids that damage the tooth enamel and thus allow access to bacteria to destroy the dentin by caries.
Together with Willoughby D. Miller, Jenkins developed the first toothpaste containing disinfectants. He named it Kolynos – a combination of two Greek words, Kolyo nosos (κωλύω νόσος), meaning “disease prevention”.
Numerous attempts to produce the toothpaste by pharmacists in Europe were uneconomic, and Jenkins returned to the US. After 17 years of development and clinical trials, Jenkins retired after transferring production and distribution to his son, Leonard A. Jenkins.
Within a few years, the company expanded in North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Far East. A branch operation opened in 1909 in London. By 1937, Kolynos had been produced in 22 countries and sold in 88 countries. Currently, Kolynos is widespread, mainly in South America and Hungary. Colgate-Palmolive took over the product of American Home Products in 1995 at a cost of one billion US dollars.[
In 1995, Colgate-Palmolive acquired Kolynos at a cost of one billion US dollars.
Kolynos products were popular in the 1930s and 1940s.
Patterns in nature are visible regularities of form found in the natural world. These patterns recur in different contexts and can sometimes be modelled mathematically. Natural patterns include symmetries, trees, spirals, meanders, waves, foams, tessellations, cracks and stripes.
Spirals are common in plants and in some animals, notably molluscs. With its colourful tail, the chameleon seems to tell us, “I can create something close to a golden spiral”.
Fibonacci (c. 1170–c. 1240–50), also known as Leonardo Bonacci, Leonardo of Pisa, or Leonardo Bigollo Pisano (‘Leonardo the Traveler from Pisa’), was an Italian mathematician from the Republic of Pisa, considered to be “the most talented Western mathematician of the Middle Ages”. He wrote books on problems in mathematics. In 1202, through his composition Liber Abaci (Book of Calculation), he introduced the so-called modus Indorum(method of the Indians), which is known today as the Hindu–Arabic numeral system.
In Liber Abaci, Fibonacci advocated the use of the digits 0–9 and place value. The book showed the practical use and value of the new Hindu-Arabic numeral system by applying the numerals to commercial bookkeeping, converting weights and measures, calculation of interest, money-changing, and other applications. The book was well-received throughout educated Europe and had a profound impact on European thought. The original 1202 manuscript is not known to exist.
With his book Liber Abaci, Fibonacci introduced the number sequence 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597,…, the series Fn = Fn-1 + Fn-2, F0 = 0, F1 = 1 to the western world.
A vital element of the Torah portion Naso (or Nasso), found in the Book of Numbers in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), concerns a treatise of the Talmud. It explains the ordeal of the bitter water, an ancient Israelite religious practice—a trial by ordeal to determine the guilt or innocence of a woman suspected of adultery by subjecting her to a painful, or at least an unpleasant and usually dangerous, trial.
If a Jewish husband suspects the pregnancy of his wife was due to adultery and has no witnesses to launch a case of adultery, either against a male perpetrator who impregnated his wife or if she was a victim of rape, not impure of the guilt of adultery, or against both the wife and the perpetrator if she participated in it willingly, he could resort to the “ordeal of the bitter water.”
The woman undergoing this ritual was called asotah (unfaithful wife or strayer). The “ordeal of the bitter water,” is a ritual that involves her drinking a concoction of water, a bit of dirt from under the marble floors of the temple, a bitter herb, and the rubbed-off dried ink of the text of the description of the sotah ritual, including the name of God.
Because the potion was regarded as impure it had to be mixed in an earthenware vessel necessitating its subsequent destruction (Numbers 5:17):
17 And the priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel; and of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle the priest shall take, and put it into the water.
The woman is required by the biblical passage to have loosened hair, a symbol of the woman’s supposed shame, during the ritual (Numbers 5:18):
18 And the priest shall set the woman before the LORD, and let the hair of the woman’s head go loose, …
A kohen (Jewish priest) in a duly established temple court administered the “ordeal of the bitter water” (Numbers 5:19–24):
And the priest shall cause her to swear, and shall say unto the woman: ‘If no man has lain with thee, and if thou hast not gone aside to uncleanness, being under thy husband, be thou free from this water of bitterness that causeth the curse; but if thou hast gone aside, being under thy husband, and if thou be defiled, and some man have lain with thee besides thy husband–then the priest shall cause the woman to swear with the oath of cursing, and the priest shall say unto the woman–the LORD make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, when the LORD doth make thy thigh to fall away, and thy belly to swell; and this water that causeth the curse shall go into thy bowels, and make thy belly to swell, and thy thigh to fall away’; and the woman shall say: ‘Amen, Amen.’ And the priest shall write these curses in a scroll, and he shall blot them out into the water of bitterness. And he shall make the woman drink the water of bitterness that causeth the curse, and the water that causeth the curse shall enter her and become bitter.
If the woman was unharmed by the bitter water, the rules regard her as innocent of the accusation.
In cases of guilt, the text does not specify the amount of time needed for the potion to take effect. Maimonides, a Sephardic Jewish philosopher who became one of the most prolific and influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages records the traditional rabbinical view: “Her belly swells first and then her thigh ruptures and she dies”. The word “thigh” is often used in the Bible as a euphemism for various reproductive organs, in this case, it may mean the uterus, the placenta, or an embryo, with the implicit threat of death resulting from possible childbirth complications or most likely refers to a uterine prolapse, a form of pelvic organ prolapse in which the uterus and a portion of the upper vagina protrude into the vaginal canal and, in severe cases, through the opening of the vagina.
The bitter water could be an abortifacient, inducing an abortion or miscarriage if the woman is pregnant with a child which her husband alleges is not his but that of another man. If the fetus aborts as a result of the ordeal, this presumably confirms the woman’s guilt of adultery, and if the fetus does not abort her innocence is presumed.
According to the Talmud, if the woman is guilty, she and the man with whom she sinned will suffer a terrible death, and if the woman has done a great deal in fostering the study of Torah, she may not die immediately but only show symptoms at the time of an illness that will eventually take her life. But if she is innocent, she won’t just escape harm but will also be blessed with children if she is childless and with healthy ones if previous ones were sickly.
According to Mishnah (“study by repetition”), the ordeal of the bitter water was abolished sometime during the first century CE under the leadership of Yohanan ben Zakkai, an important Jewish sage during the late Second Temple period and in the transformative post-destruction era. He stated: When adulterers became many, the ordeal of the bitter water stopped, for the ordeal of the bitter water is performed only in a case of doubt. But now many see their lovers in public.
Explanations in rabbinical literature vary concerning the cessation of the practice. If the ordeal of the bitter water had not been abolished, then according to Jewish law, the ritual would have ceased with the fall of the Temple (in approximately the year 70 CE), as it should not have been performed elsewhere.
If the errant wife chose to dissolve her marriage and forfeit the financial support promised her, the husband had to grant her a divorce, and she suffered no other penalty.
The ordeal of the bitter water was not intended to punish the woman if she was guilty but to absolve her if she was innocent.
In December 2019, a highly transmissible and pathogenic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2), emerged and caused a pandemic of acute respiratory disease named ‘coronavirus disease 2019’ (COVID-19), which threatens human health and public safety.
COVID-19 was first identified in a flare-up in the Chinese city of Wuhan, and attempts to contain it there failed. The virus then spread to other areas of Asia, and in January 2020, it became a worldwide pandemic of acute respiratory disease. On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) pronounced the pandemic a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).
During the present coronavirus pandemic, many people searching for useful health information have started believing many things that are not true. Widely circulated social media posts falsely suggest that the pH of COVID-19 ranges from 5.5 to 8.5 and advise readers to eat alkaline foods (specifically fruits and vegetables) with a pH of more than 8.5 to prevent COVID-19. According to many health experts, this claim about consuming alkaline foods to increase the body’s pH level and create an environment that is deadly to the virus is untrue. Eating more acidic or alkaline foods is not related to an increased or decreased risk of COVID-19 infection. There is neither evidence nor enough data to prove or support this claim.
Back then, I saw a message on WhatsApp claiming novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) could be treated by eating alkaline fruits. Similar messages appeared on Facebook and Twitter. The following message I saw on WhatsApp happens to be a fake.
“This is to inform you that the pH for coronavirus varies from 5.5 to 8.5.
*RESEARCH: JOURNAL OF VIROLOGY & ANTIVIRAL RESEARCH,*
All we need to do, to beat coronavirus, we need to take more of alkaline foods that are above the above pH level of the Virus.
Increase your intake of the above to help boost your immune system. Do not keep this information to yourself only. Pass it to all your family and friends.”
Scientists have denied the claim that coronavirus has a pH level between 5.5 and 8. Viruses themselves do not have pH levels, because they are not water-based solutions.
According to this WhatsApp message, avocado has a pH of “15.6”, but the pH scale measures from zero to 14. Nothing has a pH above 14.
The message also mentioned the wrong pH values of various fruits, which are acidic and not alkaline.
Here are the original pH levels of the fruits mentioned in the fake message:
Is this claim to eat alkaline foods (specifically fruits and vegetables) with a pH of more than 8.5 to prevent COVID-19 true? The answer is “No!”
The study quoted in the fake WhatsApp message dates back to 1991. The abstract of the study mentions that it is about coronavirus mouse hepatitis virus type 4 (MHV4). It reads: “Infection of susceptible murine cells with the coronavirus mouse hepatitis virus type 4 (MHV4) results in extensive cell-cell fusion at pHs from 5.5 to 8.5.” But COVID-19 is a new strain of virus that was unknown in the 1990s.
Our body regulates pH levels. Our diet can change only the pH level of our waste products, such as our urine and saliva, but not the pH levels in our blood cells or tissues.
Yet, there is no treatment or cure for the coronavirus. So, eating alkaline foods cannot cure or prevent coronaviruses. Yet, a healthy and balanced diet can help boost our immunity, which in turn can help us fight the deadly virus.
Now in this computer age, everyone is trying their best to do away with paperwork. The technological advancements in writing aids have made work and life easier for all of us. Most of us are familiar with the writing tablet, an electronic device, just about the size and form of an iPad, that enables us to write or draw images on its surface with a unique writing instrument called a stylus.
Surprisingly, the above image depicts the “tablet” we used when we were children as a medium for writing
It is called a writing slate, a small, thin, smooth piece of hard, flat material typically encased in a wooden frame. Writing slates were made in several different sizes and formats. Standard sizes included 5 x 7, 6 x 9, 7 x 11, and 8 x 12 inches. A slate pencil was used to write on the slate board.
Slate pencils (kallukuchi in Tamil, galkooru in Sinhalese) are made from softer and lighter chunks of soapstone, shale, slate rock, or chalk. In India, specifically in southern India, slate pencils are made from a sedimentary rock called shale, which is light gray and composed of mud, a mixture of clay minerals (kaolinite, illite, and montmorillonite) and minor amounts of other minerals, including calcite and quartz. The shale’s colour is determined by the proportion of clay to other minerals.
Erasable writing slates and slate pencils are a cheap and durable substitute for costly paper and ink.
Usually, we used the palm of our hand or a piece of cloth to clean up what we wrote on the slate.
By the turn of the century, there were calls to remove the writing slates from classrooms on grounds of hygiene.
The exact origins of the writing slate are not clear. Evidence suggests that it was used in the 16th and 17th centuries. Developments in sea and land transport in the late 18th century resulted in the gradual expansion of slate quarrying and the growth of a substantial slate workshop industry.
Slate is a fine-grained argillaceous [clayey] rock with frequent mica and quartz inclusions. This can be split or cleaved readily into thin slabs. Slate occurs in various colours: blue, green, purple, grey, and black, with the darker slates caused mainly by carbon-based inclusions.
Slate has been used in Wales, located on the western side of central southern Great Britain, since at least the Roman era, for roofing, flooring, and paving. It was popular as a building material because it was weatherproof, durable, and easy to work with. Writing slates have also been in use for centuries.
By 1840, writing slates were manufactured commercially using smoothly planed wooden boards coated with thick, porcelain-based paint.
The writing slate later developed into the blackboard. Although the term blackboard did not appear until 1815, the use of cobbled-together slates spread quickly.
At the dawn of the 20th century, writing slates were the primary tool in the classroom for students in the civilized world. In the 1930s (or later), the writing slates were replaced by modern methods for writing, but the writing slates did not become obsolete. They are still made in the twenty-first century, though in small quantities.
Former South African President Nelson Mandela, who served 27 years in prison for anti-apartheid activities, remarked, “I detest racialism because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man… To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.”
When racial discrimination was rampant, a heart-stirring poem addressed to the Americans originated from the Oglala Lakota Tribe.
I doubt the word ‘Machaan‘ used by the Tamils all over the world and the word ‘Machaang‘ used by the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, derived from the Tamil word, have any connection to the English word ‘Chum‘.
It’s common among Tamils living mostly in the southern part of Tamil Nadu to use the term ‘Machaan‘ to address one’s brother-in-law, the male offspring of one’s maternal uncle, or the male offspring of one’s paternal aunts.
The Tamil word ‘Machaan‘ was adapted by the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka during the 20th century as ‘Machaang‘ to address their close friends.
Long ago, the youngsters in all parts of Tamil Nadu, India, used the word ‘Maapillai‘ shortened as ‘Maapla‘ to address their close friends, mainly in the Tirunelveli and Madurai regions.
Now, the original word ‘Machaan‘ has spawned the colloquial word “Machi” and is now commonly used by present-day Tamil youngsters to address their close associates.
Kachchakaduge Nalin Ruwanjeewa Fernando (born May 8, 1973) is a Sri Lankan politician and Member of Parliament.
Nalin Fernando got educated at Joseph Vaz College, Wennappuwa, Sri Lanka.. He has a postgraduate degree in Business Management from the University of Colombo and a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Northampton.
He has held various senior roles at state-owned organizations:
Director: Agricultural Products Marketing Authority, Director: Ceylon Steel Corporation, Chairman: Co-operative Wholesale Establishment, Chairman: Lanka Sathosa, Director: Paddy Marketing Board , and Director: State Commercial (Cooperatives and Wholesale) Company.
On July 21, 2016, former Chairman of Sathosa Nalin Fernando was arrested by the Colombo Crimes Division (CCD) on charges of alleged misuse of vehicles belonging to the government.
On April 6, 2018, the Colombo Crimes Division and the Financial Crimes Investigation Division (FCID) arrested Nalin Fernando, while attempting to flee the country for embezzling Rs 39 million of state funds in the purchase of carom and checkers boards in 2014. He was later released on bail.
In October 2019, the authorities imposed a travel ban on him and lifted it in December 2019.
Nalin Fernando and Mahinda Rajapaksa in October 2019.
In 2020, Nalin Fernando, belonging to the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) took part in the parliamentary elections as an electoral alliance candidate of the Sri Lanka People’s Freedom Alliance. He contested in the Gampaha District and got elected to the Parliament of Sri Lanka.
Nine new cabinet ministers were sworn in on Friday, May 20, 2022, in debt-ridden Sri Lanka to ensure stability until the formation of a full cabinet. Nalin Fernando was sworn in as the Minister of Trade, Commerce, and Food Security. His appointment did not evoke any surprise among the public.
Statue of Devasahayam Pillai at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral, Kottar, Nagercoil.
In the Vatican, during the impressive canonization ceremony held in St. Peter’s Basilica today, Sunday, May 15, 2022, His Holiness Pope Francis canonized Blessed Devasahayam Pillai, along with nine others. The choir made Tamil proud by singing “Tamil Thai Vaazhthu” (Praise to Mother Tamil).
Credit: News 18 Tamil Nadu
Devasahayam Pillai, embraced Christianity in the 18th century and is considered a martyr. He is the first Indian layman to be declared a saint.
Devasahayam Pillai (April 23, 1712 – January 14, 1752) was born as Neelakanta Pillai into an affluent Pillai-caste Hindu family at Nattalam in the present-day Kanyakumari District, then belonging to the Kingdom of Travancore.
Neelakanta Pillai’s father, Vasudevan Namboodiri, hails from Kayamkulam, in present-day Kerala state. He was a priest at the Adikesava Perumal Temple in Thiruvattar, in present-day Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu. His mother, Devaki Amma, hails from Thiruvattar in Kanyakumari District. In the Nair matrilineal traditions of the day, his maternal uncle raised him and inculcated him with Hindu beliefs and traditions.
The family of Vasudevan Namboodiri had much influence in the royal palace of Maharaja Marthanda Varma, King of Travancore. So, young Neelakanta Pillai went into the service of the royal palace. Ramayyan Dalawa, the Dewan of Travancore, noticed the capabilities and enthusiasm of the young man and appointed him as an official in charge of state affairs.
Captain Eustachius De Lannoy
In 1741, the Dutch East India Company sent naval commander Captain Eustachius De Lannoy to capture and establish a trading port at Colachel in Travancore. In the ensuing “Battle of Colachel”, the Dutch forces were defeated. De Lannoy, his assistant Donadi, and some Dutchmen surrendered.
The king of Travancore pardoned De Lannoy and the Dutchmen , on condition that they serve in the Travancore army.
In the course of time, earning the trust of the king, De Lannoy became the commander of the Travancore armed forces. He trained the Travancore forces on European lines. He introduced new weaponry and gun-powder. He won many battles for Travancore and annexed many neighbouring kingdoms and territories to Travancore.
Conversion to Christianity
When Neelakanta Pillai was 29 years old, he got acquainted with Captain Eustachius De Lannoy. The latter’s Christian faith interested the former. De Lannoy enlightened Neelakanta Pillai on the Christian faith.
In 1745, Neelakanta Pillai got baptized at the Roman Catholic sub parish church at Vadakkankulam village (in the present-day Tirunelveli District of Tamil Nadu), where the Jesuits had a mission under Rev. Fr. R Bouttari Italus SJ. He assumed the name Devasahayam, which is the Christian name ‘Lazarus’ in the local language. “Lazarus” or “Devasahayam” in Malayalam, translates to “God is my help.”.
Devasahaym’s wife, Bhargavi Ammaal hailed from Kunchu Veedu, Elanthavilai, Mayicode in Travancore State. She, too, got baptized alongside her husband. She assumed the baptismal name “Gnanapoo Ammaal” (“Flower of Knowledge,” equal to Theresa in Tamil and Malayalam). Later on, some other members of Devasahayam Pillai’s immediate family also received baptism.
Fearing reprisal in her native village in Travancore against her religious conversion, she became a migrant-resident of Vadakkankulam village.
Accusations and charges
Devasahayam Pillai insisted on the equality of all people, despite caste differences. This infuriated the higher classes. The Brahmin Chief Priest of the kingdom, a few feudal lords, some members of the royal household, and the Nair community brought false charges against Devasahayam Pillai. They alleged that he, by using his powerful official position and the state funds, was orchestrating conversions of Hindus to Christianity. He was also accused of treason for divulging state secrets to Europeans because they were his coreligionists. Also, documents dating back to the period encompassing Pillai’s lifetime show that the religious conversion of court officials to Christianity was not tolerated. The Dewan, Ramayyan Dalawa arrested Devasahyam Pillai and divested him of his portfolio in the Travancore administration.
The authorities treated Devasahayam Pillai like a criminal. As advocated by the royal ministers, ten different karyakkars (Royal officers) tortured him. They beat him every day with eighty stripes.; rubbed pepper on his wounds and nostrils; made him stand in the sun, and gave him only stagnant water to drink.
Devasahyam Pillai remained in prison for three years, during which time the king of Travancore came under tremendous pressure from the Europeans who sought his release. Finally, in 1792, royal orders declared his banishment from the Kingdom of Travancore.
The authorities made him sit backward on a water buffalo (the mythical vehicle or vahana of Yama, the lord of death in Hinduism) . They marched him from the Padmanabhapuram Palace to Aralvaimozhy over a period of a few days.
According to the royal order, he was to undergo a public humiliation. As was customary in those days for criminals, they painted his body with red and black spots. They made him sit backward on a water buffalo (the mythical vehicle or vahana of Yama, the lord of death in Hinduism).
They marched him from Padmanabhapuram Palace to Aralvaimozhy. On the way, they halted at Puliyoorkurichi about 15 km from Nagercoil. There, Devasahayam kneeled before a rock to pray. The Christians believe that God quenched his thirst by letting water gush through a small hole in the rock. The water hole is still found in the compound of St. Martyr Devasahayam Pillai Church, at Puliyoorkurichi.
On reaching Aralvaimozhy, the authorities released him into a mountainous forest area, on the other side of which was the kingdom of the Pandya kings, the traditional rivals of Travancore.
Death
After his release, Devasahayam started meditating. People from the nearby villages started visiting the holy man. This infuriated high caste Hindus, who plotted to kill him.
On January 14, 1752, soldiers from the Travancore kingdom tried to shoot Devasahayam but were unable to fire their guns. Devasahayam then took a gun from one of the soldiers. He blessed it, gave it back to him, and asked the soldiers to shoot him to death if they wished to do so. The soldiers then fired at him five times and threw his dead body near the foothills at Kattadimalai. Devasahayam Pillai thus received the crown of martyrdom.
Some people in the region recovered Devasahayam’s body and carried it to St. Francis Xavier’s Church (now the diocesan cathedral) at Kottar, Nagercoil, and interred his mortal remains near the altar. From that day on, many Christian pilgrims have visited his tomb and offered prayers.
The followers of Martyr Devasahyam Pillai, have preserved his clothes and other belongings at the Holy Family Church, built in 1779, in the small town of Vadakkankulam in Tirunelveli District of Tamil Nadu State, India. Kept in a glass case, these relics are exposed on August 15 every year, during the feast of the Assumption of Mary. His wife, Gnanapoo Ammaal is buried in the cemetery there.
Impressions 