On Wed, 2013-09-04 at 12:23 +0530, Kingsley Jegan Joseph wrote: > where I grew up (Cuddalore)
Interesting. I used to pass through Cuddalore (which I believe should be spelt Cuddle-oor, which is how it is pronounced :) ) with reasonable frequency. I studied in Pondicherry a long time ago and spent some of the best years of my life there in the 70s and early 80s. Cuddalore had the slowest train to Bangalore in the world - it used to take something like 26 hours (or was it 30 hours?) for 300 odd miles. The area is rich with some seriously ancient history. Cuddalore is one site where ancient Roman coins have been found indicative of sea trade with Rome a couple of thousand years ago. Even more spectacular is the finding of Indus valley like script on pottery in Nagapattinam south of Cuddalore. But nothing can beat Tiruvakkarai - a place with 30 million year old fossilized trees which I vandalized a few decades ago. I still have the stuff I filched. (Well actually I picked up loose bits and pieces lying around and left the tree trunks alone. I felt that it would be bothersome to carry a 1000 kg tree trunk on my bike) shiv
