Tamil Heritage Month began in 2010 and seeks to celebrate Tamil heritage, culture, and history. Throughout this month, we will be providing you with educational material such as this that seeks to help us understand our culture, roots and heritage.

ROOT is the Dravidian civilization that is still alive since pre Christian era.

LANGUAGE is Tamil, the mother of all modern Dravidian languages, vibrant, serving to this day as the medium of communication by which this heritage draws its sustenance to exist.

SEMINAL EVENT is the creation of the literary masterpiece and grammar called Tolkappium circa 1500 BC, that function as a blueprint for the Tamil way of life and grammar.

CULTURE is The Tamil concept of love and life known as Aham and Puram.

BOOK is Tirukkural, an incomparable ethical masterpiece written in first century BC for mankind.

RELIGION is experiencing Iraivan, otherwise known as the inner light as defined by Tirukkural, yet allowing the freedom and flexibility to conceptualize the Godhead to one’s ability in specific terms to experience and comprehend that inner reality.

MUSIC is the Tamil classical music as codified in the immortal epic Silappathikaram during second century AD.

DANCE is Nattiyam or koothu as documented by the epic Silappathikaram.

ART is symbolized by the statue Siva Nataraja, the best metaphor for the God principle as per Albert Einstein.

CREED is Yathum oorae yavarum kelir, meaning “every place is my place and everyone is my friend” proclaimed by a Tamil poet 2000 years ago.

TAMIL DIASPORA starts its story in the now extinct and submerged Lemuria continent south of Sri Lanka/Tamileelam several millennia before Christ. After the sea swept the land of Lemuris the Tamils moved north to Kapadapuram. During this period of Idai sangam or the second academy, circa 1500 BC, only one book, Tolkappium reached as safely. Sea erosions did not leave Kapadapuram either and Tamils again moved still northward to Madurai, the seat of the third academy or kadai sangam around 100 BC. Most of the currently available classical Tamil literature is of this period, breathtaking for its elegance and sophistication.

PEOPLE: Now more than 70 million Tamils live in 75 countries.

OBLIGATION: Willingness to adopt or inherit the value systems of Tamil heritage; discover Tamil heritage. It will lead you to excellence and respect will come to you. Excellence in any endeavour always brings attention to the uniqueness of that individual and elevates the heritage that induced it. Do not let the world label you as a Tamil after you excel. Be Tamil first so that it can induce and help you to excel. Let your actions speak and be anchored in the bedrock of Tamil heritage.

Source:

International Tamil Language Foundation (2000). Tirukkural; The handbook of Tamil culture and heritage; Guide to Tamils Future. Illinois, National Publishing Co.

Watch and enjoy the video!

I like to think of songs to create dance videos that will get me many views internationally. To date, I have over 1 million collective views on all my uploaded YouTube videos because of it. Immediately after the official release of “Why This Kolaveri Di,” I had thought the same only because I noticed its view count increasing at a rapid rate every time I went back to check. I reached out to a close friend who I dance with, Senduran Bhakthakumaran (2wist), and he was all in for the idea. We’ve been in close contact with Anujan Meshach Asokan (X-cluzive) in wanting to make a dance video and so he came up to Waterloo and we decided that “Why This Kolaveri Di” would be the song to which we dance to. He’s the one who came up with the idea of dancing to dubstep version though our initial plan was to dance to the original version. We were hoping our moves would go viral as well. To date, it has been shared on Facebook over 6,000 times and has earned over 27,000 views worldwide (averaging over 1,000 views/day). We find it astonishing just as much as everyone else is.

Calling all young musical artists!!!

Are you a music lover? Do you live and breathe music? Are you creative? Do you make your own music? Are you wondering how to bring your music to the limelight? Arts and Culture Council of Canadian Tamil Youth Alliance has come up with an online music competition. This is your chance to shine and expose your talent! We will post your music on our YouTube channel for others to listen to, and each month audiences will vote on their favourite music!

Deadline to Enroll:December 20, 2011

$500 worth of gift certificates for the winners!

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Terms of Participation:

1.) ISAI WAR will begin the season with 6 contestants and continue for 5 consecutive months. The contestants must sign up through e-mail at isaiwar@ctya.org.  The contestants must have unique names.  The contestants may be a team or an individual.

2.) The voting will take place from the midnight on the 1^st until 2300 hr on the 20^th of each month. Contestants will have the opportunity to encourage their fans to vote for their music. There will be no voting after the 20^th. So sit back and enjoy the music, or get up and dance!

3.) FANS MUST “LIKE” THE VIDEO ON YOUTUBE IN ORDER TO CAST THEIR VOTE.  “DISLIKES” on YouTube will not be counted towards the votes.  “LIKE” on Facebook page or anywhere else will not count either.

4.) At the end of the voting period, the contestant with the lowest votes will be eliminated from the ISAI WAR.  Each month there will be one less contestant competing.  The finals will take place between two contestants on the 5^th month.  After the finals, the contestant with the most votes will be the champion of the season.

5.) At the end the voting period, if the difference in votes between the 2 contestants with the least votes appears to be less than 10 “LIKES”, ISAI WAR admin will announce tie breakers.

6.) When preparing the music in video format for YouTube, the title of the song, name of the group AND the names of the individuals who worked on the song must be included!

7.) Administration reserves the right to request to remove any inappropriate content according to the YouTube Terms of Service.  http://www.youtube.com/t/terms

8.) No profanity or inappropriate comments to be used when commenting on the videos.  If used, it will be removed by the admin and the user may be blocked from future participation. Respecting others is key.

9.) Please keep in mind that a variety of age groups that will be listening to your music. So please present your music all ages appropriate.

10.) All contents must be original to the contestant.  Plagiarized contents will be removed from the contest.

11.) By agreeing to participate in ISAI WAR, the contestant give permission to Canadian Tamil Youth Alliance (CTYA) and its affiliates to broadcast their music on various media outlets.

12.) All participants must become members of CTYA.

13.) HOW TO SUBMIT MUSIC:

• Music must be submitted to the Arts and Culture Council 7 days prior to the 1^st of every month.
• Music must be submitted in YouTube supported formats. Please see the link for more info:
  http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=55744
• You may attach the video or a link to download the video on an e-mail and send it to isaiwar@ctya.org.
• Our Admin will add the music to our YouTube channel and publish the link on ISAI WAR’s Facebook page.
• Only music is important to the ISAI WAR.  You don’t need to have moving images for the videos.  You may use appropriate pictures or texts.

14.) THEMES:

• Month 1 – An introduction or a theme of your choice
• Month 2 – Passion
• Month 3 – Family and/or Friendship
• Month 4 – Freedom

15.) LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST, Share your music, have fun, be creative, and blow the minds of the music lovers out there!!!!Good Luck!

How many of us knew about Bodhidharma before watching the movie? Probably very few if any. How many of us know who he is after watching the movie? All of us.

Bodhidharma, also known as Daruma, or Damu, has been credited with the founding of Martial Arts (China) and Zen (Japan). According to the movie, he was a Tamil Prince, who traveled from South-India to the east-Pacific region to prevent a disease from spreading to India. During his stay at the Shaolin Temple in China, he taught the warrior monks physical conditioning exercises which later evolved as kung-fu and martial arts in China, and as Karate in Japan (McFarland, 1987).

Bodhidharma is still a powerful symbol in China and Japan today. Many folllowers continue to worship him, and hold rituals after him. Every January 18, a Daruma Bonfire is held in Japan, where papier mache dolls off Bodhidharma are burned in a pyre (McFarland, 1987).  Each year, thousands of people buy a Bodhidharma doll at the beginning of a year, with a goal/wish, and paint one eye on the doll. They keep the doll with them throughout the year, and when the wish comes true, they paint the other eye. At the end of the year on January 18, they return back to the temple, thank Daruma, burn the dolls, and purchase a new one for the upcoming year. The dolls are said to represent persistence, since no matter how many times you knock it over, it returns back to its original pose, and the dolls eyes are in the ‘zazen position’ a meditation that is suppose to clear the mind and increase concentration (McFarlane, 1987).

For those of you who watched the movie, you know this wasn’t just any movie. It was a movie that brought the community together through our history and identity.  It evoked passion, and unity. This movie reminded us of the richness of our Tamil history, and the sophistication of our ancestors.

Media is a powerful tool, more powerful than any other tool in the world. It’s the only tool that truly reaches thousands of people at once, and makes people aware of things they never knew before. The power of media is unparalleled to any other medium.  7am Arivu taught us a great deal, to never forget our history, and to treat our ancestors knowledge as sacred, valuable and scientific.

Without the making of this movie, many us may never have known of Bodhidharma, going to show that media has the power to educate the masses in a medium they can quickly understand and grasp. While this movie made us aware of one part of our history, there are so much more that is still buried away. Filmmakers, journalists, artists and photographers have an important role in our community, a role that we must realize and encourage. They have the power to document, to educate and to empower our cultural practices, our traditions and histories. They have the power to raise awareness.

If you take a look at the many historical books that talk about Bodhidharma, there’s one thing that’s very difficult to ignore. If you look at the earlier reproductions, paintings and drawings of Bodhidharma, his facial features correspond with those facial features with South-Asians. However, as time progressed, Bodhidharma has been painted and drawn with Asian facial features, making him resemble a Chinese/Japanese ethnic background. In today’s popular imagination, his facial features have changed significantly from what he may really have looked like as a Thamizhan. If we don’t write and record our history, someone else will rewrite for us, and it won’t always be to reflect the truth.

Knowledge and information has been safeguarded within tight-communities in our community, making accessibility a problem. While some may think this safeguards information, the truth is information that is so tightly controlled, will eventually be lost with the holders of that information. Many companies have realized this today and have implemented knowledge sharing policies in their organizational structure so so that as employees leave, the knowledge is still retained by the company. We as a community need to work together to share our knowledge, our information, our histories, our traditions and our wisdom. Information and knowledge is wealth, and we need to cultivate and share our personal information and knowledge and make it part of our community’s collective knowledge and information.

7am Arivu may have taught us something important, but if we do nothing with it, then it would have been a waste.

Source:

McFarlane, N. (1987). “The Founder of Zen in Japanese Art and Popular Culture.” NY: Kodansha International Ltd.

Any athlete knows the effects of positive thinking and focus.  It pushes them to achieve great short and long term goals.  Staying positive and pushing out the distractions and obstacles to attaining your goals is part of confidence building.

Terry Orlick is a world renowned leader in the applied field of sport psychology, mental training and excellence.  In his book, ‘Pursuit of Excellence,’ he mentions positive focus reminders to help you in your ongoing pursuit of personal excellence.  Consider these focus positive reminders:

I am in control of my thinking, my focus, my life.

I am a good, valued person in my own right.

I control my focus and therein direct the whole pattern of my performance, health, and life.

I am fully capable of achieving the goals that I set for myself.  They are within my control.

I control the step in front of me by focusing fully on that step.

I am fully capable of focusing through adversity and staying on a positive path.

I learn from setbacks and turn them into positive opportunities for personal growth.

I embrace lessons from my experience and act on those lessons.

My powerful mind and body are one.  I free them to excel.

Every day in some way I am better, wiser, more adaptable, more focused, more confident, and more in control.

I choose to live life fully.

I choose to excel.

What I decide, I become.

(Orlick, 2008, p. 158)

Be creative, stick this as a note in your bedroom wall, in your desktop wall paper or somewhere you can see it daily.  These suggestions are not just intended for athletes but anyone who has positive goals in life.  If you want to learn more on this, read Pursuit of Excellence by Terry Orlick, it’s a great book and bound to give you the mental edge in achieving your goals.

Orlick, T. (2008). In Pursuit of Excellence: How to win in sport and life through mental training (4th ed.). Windsor: Human Kinetics

Every day is filled with small steps.
Every step is a learning hurdle.
Every hurdle can be overcome.
Every hurdle that is overcome makes you a stronger person.

As hard as the journey may be,
Never regret climbing those small steps.
Never regret crossing the hurdles.
In the end, that is what makes you a better person overall.

Technology is amazing! In reality, it allows us to take pleasure with a high level of solace in our day-to-day activities, enhancing the circumstances of our working, functioning lives. But don’t you think we’re pushing it? Don’t you feel that our dependence on technology has gone a little bit too far?

Ever come across a cashier who wasn’t aware that there was a sale on a specific item? You tell her the coat is priced at $50 but is 20% off and she can’t do the math because she doesn’t have a calculator! I’m no mathematician but instances like these astonish me! This may just be a minor problem we encounter in our daily lives but it seems to me that this is just representative of a larger issue.  We’re surrounded by technology; it’s at our fingertips and definitely makes several things a lot simpler, but that doesn’t necessarily suggest that we should depend on it to the point where we can’t think and do things for ourselves. People would lose their minds at even the thought of another blackout! Thu thu thu!

Keep in mind, it isn’t simply the way we utilize technology, but the way in which individuals tend to lose themselves over it and develop this kind of fixation. For example, it seems we can no longer live without our mobile phones. We have it by our sides when we’re eating, when we’re driving, while in class, texting while in the middle of a conversation with actual real human beings in front of us!

Don’t get me wrong, technology has more ups than it has downs. We can heat up food in minutes, people can be sent to the moon, diseases have been cured and we no longer have to jot down directions due to GPS systems. What I’m saying is we need to find a balance. When I woke up this morning and tuned in to the news, one of the “breaking news” was a report on the backlog of messages causing problems for BlackBerry users. THIS is breaking news? More important issues like the ‘Eurozone Crisis’ may be of more relevance to news, but no, BlackBerry’s backlog is a headliner.

My point is that we should try to find a balance, as with everything in life. Instead of always listening to your iPod or iTouch, it’s okay to buy a CD. Instead of reading novels by swooping your finger across your PlayBook, it’s okay to go to libraries. Instead of texting away or FaceTiming a friend who lives a block away, it’s okay to get out and chat with them over coffee. If we’re capable of looking forward to the future without forgetting our past, we’ll have nothing to worry about.

But, we fail to remember that the greatest leaders and revolutionists  in history have also been given the same amount of time as we have; they day was still 24 hours long, and the week was still 7 days. Time did not expand to allow for them to have more time to create positive change in the world, they instead utilized the time they had effectively.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an instrumental figure in the civil rights movement where he worked endlessly towards securing rights for coloured people. He dedicated his time to work towards ending racial segregation and racial discrimination.

Mother Teresa founded the Charity of Missionaries and dedicated her life to care for the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying. All the time she was given, she dedicated it towards humanitarian work.

Albert Einstein changed the face of science; deriving many theories that have helped us understand how the world functions today, he spent a lot of time working towards the advancement of modern science.

Alexander the Great lived 32 years, but he built the largest empire in the world at the time.

Next time you say you don’t have time to do something you feel like you should be doing, ask yourself if time is the real issue. Because, if you truly wanted to do something, you would MAKE time.

” Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn‘t do than by the ones you did do.” – Mark Twain

“The time is always right to do what is right.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one. – Mother Teresa

Written by: Jess E.

So, it’s your first formal? Here are some do’s and don’ts that some young women use in preparing for a formal. Have some ideas of your own? Leave behind your tips.

Lights, camera, ACTION! Before you start taking pictures in the bathroom because of the AMAZING lighting, you need to first look over this . We all spend hours prior to the day of the formal looking over what to wear, and looking at who’s on the attending Facebook list. But we never take into consideration that going to a formal is like going to a wedding, you can never be too prepared.

Ladies, here are the DO’s:

1.       Before you grab your mom and bombard all the sari stores in Scarborough, it’s important you figure out what kind of sari you want to wear. It has to be unique, and at the same time suit you. So before you start saving pictures of Shreya with the latest saris on your blackberry and iPhone, try to remember if you’re doing it, then 300 other girls attending formal are too, and seeing another girl wear the same sari as you is quite embarrassing.

2.       Book your sari blouse sewing lady out in advance. So your friend told you her neighbor makes blouses. If she’s telling you, it’s most likely that she and 10 other friends are also getting their blouses made there.

3.       Thirdly, if you know how to put on a sari properly, you are a very talented soul.  If not, make sure you have someone to dress you on the day of. Remember formals happen on sporadic days so expecting your mom to be home on a Thursday at 3pm because you have a makeup appointment at 4pm at MAC is not realistic.

4.       PINS PINS PINS AND MORE PINS! You never know what’s going to come apart with one single dance move so it is very important to be prepared

5.       Make sure you have tamed eyebrows; you can get it done for under $4 at any local plaza, so no excuses.  

6.       Delete all pictures of you on Facebook if you are repeating a sari. Thanks to technology, girls can be at the table beside you looking at a picture of you on Facebook wearing the same sari and pointing at it and saying “see, I told you she wore it before”.

7.       Make sure the night before you keep your sari, jewelry, shoes, clutch, ticket and make up in a corner in your home in a safe place. This way you don’t need to be throwing things around to find all these details.

8.       Before you leave your house, take a couple of pictures in the washroom mirror. Make sure you clean your mirror, and take off the flash for an awesome picture. Once this is done, set this in your BBM or Live profile display so everyone can have a sneak peak of what you look like.

9.  When you arrive at formal, make sure you hug and run up to all your friends like you haven’t seen them at school hours before and take a picture with EVERYONE you see. There is no point in going to a formal if there aren’t pictures that you can profile pic on Facebook the next day.

10.   Have an awesome time! Be responsible, and make sure you have a ride home.  

DON’T!!!!! 

1.       Try a new hairstyle the day of, it’s not going to work unless you’re completely awesome with hair.

2.       Put seven different eye shadow colours on, you’re going to a formal not a carnival.

3.       Forget to put on deodorant, it’s not appealing to look fairly attractive and smell awful at the same time.

4.       Wear heels you can’t walk in for 5 minutes in. If you can’t walk in it, you definitely can’t dance in it.

5.       Add people you met on formal on Facebook right away. Facebook has this weird feature that states that A and B became friends after attending C’s formal, and then you’ll be nicknamed the formal adder.

6.       Not be caught without lip gloss or chap stick, trust me you’ll need it.

That concludes the segment of your very own survival guide to formal. It is understandable that different people have different rituals.  The most important part is that you don’t forget your tickets and ID, and that you are safe and responsible till you get home safe. Hope you enjoyed it!

Did you know?           

-          Rachel McAdams (BFA ’01), star of Hollywood’s The Notebook, studied theatre at York University.

-          Margaret Atwood and Lester B. Pearson were both graduates of the University of Toronto. Established in 1827, the University of Toronto is Canada’s largest university.

-          Ryerson’s Growing. Approximately 27,000 undergraduate and graduate students, including 2,200 master’s and PhD students.

-          UOIT (University of Ontario) is Ontario’s first laptop-based university

-          Sir Wilfred Laurier was a graduate of McGill University.

-         For 19 years in a row, Waterloo University  has been named Canada’s most innovative university in the Maclean’s annual university reputational rankings

-         McMaster is the only North American host site of a United Nations University

Some interesting school stats of Canadian students collected from (Census at Schools, 2010):  

-          Physical education was the most favorite subject for elementary and secondary Canadian school children, with 27%.

-          18.2% of elementary and secondary school children don’t eat breakfast.

-          27.7 % of these same kids think that the kids who bully are kids do so because they are insecure (Right on!).

-          For most students, their role model is actually a relative, not a celebrity.