Searching for a town - need help

Nora4

Hi!

We are in the planning stage of our next trip to India.
I am looking for a town, where one of our family members where born, but could not locate it on a map.

The town is mentioned as "Kulai Palyam" in "Tamil Nadu".

Any suggestions, who we can find this most probably little village????

Thank!
Nora

xiaojie

any more clues..?

xiaojie

is it "Palayamkottai"

Nora4

Hallo!

No, unfortunately no more clues

We are a family of four, with two adopted kids (siblings) from India. Our older one is adopted at the age of nearly 5 and would be very happy to know where she was born. The documents only states the name and state. but no district. The only village I found, which is written very similar and is "Kuilapalyam", which is a town close to Auroville.

Maybe the problem is the spelling or pronociation, because the documents are from a maharashtrian court.

So I am also looking to goverment offices, which could help me.
I wrote to the tamilnadu-tourist-office, but got no reply and I also tried to write to the tamilnadu goverment, with the same result - NO REPLY.

Nora
In the planning stage of the next trip to India

snonymous

There is a Kulai village in Dakshin Kannada Dist. of Karnataka. Does that help? Palaiyam just means small village or very small township. Try with Kuzhai spelling also, sometimes zh is pronounced as l colloquially.

snonymous

Maybe the problem is the spelling or pronociation, because the documents are from a maharashtrian court.


Could it be Kovil palayam?
There is a Kovil Palayam at Pulampatty Post Edappady Taluk Salem District
Also KOVIL PALAYAM District: PinCode: 641107

Perhaps you could do a further search on google or similar?

fsg

Try emailing MK Stalin, son of the CM of TN, he gets around the state a lot and may help OR get the list of all the MLA's in TN and email, they
might know of it,

Try district collectors too

Its odd the language is not Tamil

Nora4

Hi!
In the meantime I found the "GIS for Tamil Nadu" in the internet, where I could search for towns/villages, but no kulai palyam :-(

I found Kottaipalayam, Kalipalayam, Kullakalipalayam, Kulali Palayam, Kuilapalyam and Kulaiyaneri, Kulaiyankarisal,Kulaiyanur in Tamil Nadu - so there are a lot of options.


@snonymous
thank you very much for reply. It helped me to understand what pal(a)yam means.
It is interesting that there is a Kulai village in Karnataka, because one older child from the orphanage told us, that she believes, that our daughter spoke Kannada. Are the two languages Tamil and Kannada similar ones???

@fsg
Thank you for your reply tooo. Where can I find the email-adress of MK Stalin???
What do you mean with? "Its odd the language is not Tamil".
Do you mean the name of the village???

I think the main-problem is the translation from one language/script to another to another. Tamil->Marathi/Hindi->English......

So, we have to visit all places ;-)

Nora

snonymous

@snonymous
thank you very much for reply. It helped me to understand what pal(a)yam means.
It is interesting that there is a Kulai village in Karnataka, because one older child from the orphanage told us, that she believes, that our daughter spoke Kannada. Are the two languages Tamil and Kannada similar ones???

Tamil and Kannada are distinct languages, some words may be similar, but Tamil is a Dravidian language. The 2 states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are neighbours.

MK Stalin is a powerful politician in TN, he is the son of the Chief Minister M Karunanidhi. Im not sure if fsg was being dry, but I suppose there is no harm in contacting a powerful state politician. It is unlikely but who knows, he may actually help you.

The contact for Mr Karunanidhi's office according to the TN govt website is: cmcell@tn.gov.in Try it, he may help.

http://www.tn.gov.in is the TN govt website.

Good luck.

Nick-H

kuil... seems like a phonetic interpretation of kovil or koil, which means temple. (or koel, which is the Asian Cuckoo, a bird with a hanting and wonderful cry)

Hmmm... Temple town... I wonder how many of those there are in TN ?

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IndiaMike Mod Team (The Grumpy One)

Munivar

Palayams - are typically in Periyar, Coimbatore, Salem districts.

For ex, Mettupalayam, Gobichettipalayam, etc.

I think you are looking for KoilPalayam (temple-palayam) and I would think there should at least be a dozen Koilpalayams in TN.

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machadinha

I think maybe if you were to just go and make enquiries on the ground you'd stand a decent chance of finding the place you're looking for. Be sure to carry what descriptions and so on of the place you can, and be prepared to be (usually "helpfully") misinformed some of the time, or not finding it at all. I don't know what age your daughter is now but this could naturally be hard for her to deal with, so make sure she's prepared to face any possible disappointment (also if you do find the place btw, although it seems like a perfectly natural wish to me).

Maybe try enquiring with some Asian studies departments close (or less close) to you. Can the adoption agency at the time not give you some further clues?

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atala

There is a Kuilapalayam, a Tamil village in Auroville. There are major Auroville sites right there in this village area, like the Auroville Health Center (a hospital), the AV secondary school, the AV bakery, and a number of AV communities, one of the first ones in AV history being Aspiration. Kuilapalayam is right at the entrance of the upper Auroville circle if you come from the beach road (ECR=East Coast Road). It is in section G5 of this map:
http://www.auroville.org/thecity/avmap.htm

There is also an AV school which educates village kids from difficult social back-grounds.http://www.auroville.org/education/v...ewcreation.htm

Maybe it is this what you are looking for?

if this might be it, and you need social info, you could contact the Auroville Village Action Group: avag@auroville.org.in

A description of their work here:
http://www.auroville.org/environment/avag/avag.htm

Nora4

Hi!

Thank you for your replies.

@machadinha
Sorry, my English is not so good, but I will try to explain. Yes, it's a wish of my daughter (nearly 9 years old), but I also know, that we most probably will not be able to find the town now. She don't know, that I am searching. So, if we could not find the town or are not sure (because, we found a lot of villages, which could be the right one), she is not disappointed. We also know, that the feelings which could arise, when coming to the village, could be very emotional in every way.
I contacted the agency, but until now, I got no respond. But we will visit the orphanage next year, before we go to Tamil Nadu, maybe we will find something out. If not she has to wait until she will be older and has the right to look into the sealed papers.

@atala
Yes, I also found this small village near auroville!!!!! It's the town with the closet spelling to the town I am searching for!!!

Thank you for the links. I will contact them.

Thank you!!!
Nora

vinatara

[quote=snonymous;488491]

Tamil and Kannada are distinct languages, some words may be similar, but Tamil is a Dravidian language. The 2 states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are neighbours.

QUOTE]

...I thought Kannada is also a Dravidian language. (so are malayalam, telugu, brahui(W pakisthan)etc... )

ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dravidian_languages