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Black pepper is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. Black pepper is native to South India and is extensively cultivated there and elsewhere in tropical regions. The fruit is a small drupe five millimetres in diameter, dark red when fully mature, containing a single seed. Dried and ground pepper is one of the most common spices in European cuisine and its descendants, having been known and prized since antiquity for both its flavour and its use as a medicine. The spiciness of black pepper is due to the chemical piperine. Ground black peppercorn, usually referred to simply as "pepper", may be found on nearly every dinner table in some parts of the world, often alongside its frequent companion, table salt. (more...)
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Kerala is a state on the southwestern tropical Malabar Coast of India. To its east and northeast, Kerala borders Tamil Nadu and Karnataka; to its west and south lie the Indian Ocean islands of Lakshadweep and the Maldives, respectively. Kerala also envelops Mahé, a coastal exclave of the Union Territory of Pondicherry. In prehistory, Kerala's rainforests and wetlands — then thick with malaria-bearing mosquitoes and man-eating tigers — were largely avoided by Neolithic humans. More than a millennium of overseas contact and trade culminated in four centuries of struggle between and among multiple colonial powers and native Keralite states. Kerala was granted statehood on November 1, 1956. Radical social reforms begun in the 19th century by the kingdoms of Kochi and Travancore — and spurred by such leaders as Narayana Guru and Chattampi Swamikal — were continued by post-Independence governments, making Kerala among the Third World's longest-lived, healthiest, and most literate regions. Kerala's 31.8 million people now live under a stable democratic socialist political system and exhibit unusually equitable gender relations. (more...)
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Kochi (formerly known as Cochin) is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, and one of the principal seaports of the country. According to the 2001 census, the metropolitan area of Kochi is the largest urban agglomeration in Kerala, with a population of 1,355,406 – of which 650,000 reside in the city. Kochi is located in the district of Ernakulam, about 220 km north of the state capital Thiruvananthapuram. Since 1102 AD, the city of Kochi was the seat of an eponymous princely state which traces its lineages to the Kulasekhara empire. Kochi was an important spice trading centre on the Arabian Sea coast since the 14th century. Kochi was the site of the first European colonial settlement in India, and remained the capital of Portuguese India till 1530, before it was moved to Goa. The city was later occupied by the Dutch, Mysore and the English. Successive waves of migration over the course of several millennia, has made Kochi a melting pot of different cultures; a blend of tradition and modernity. Kochi is the commercial hub of Kerala, and one of the fastest growing second-tier metros in India. (more...)
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Red rain in Kerala was a phenomenon observed sporadically from 25 July to 23 September 2001 in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Heavy downpours occurred in which the rain was primarily red, staining clothes and appearing like blood. Yellow, green, and black rains were also reported.
It was initially suspected that the rains were coloured by fallout from a hypothetical meteor burst, but the Government of India commissioned a study which found the rains had been coloured by spores from a locally prolific aerial algae. Then in early 2006, the coloured rains of Kerala suddenly rose to worldwide attention after media reports of an extraordinary theory that the coloured particles are extraterrestrial cells, proposed by Godfrey Louis and Santhosh Kumar of the Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam. (more...)
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Thiruvananthapuram, formerly known as Trivandrum, is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala and the headquarters of Thiruvananthapuram District. It is located on the west coast of India near the extreme south of the mainland.It is characterized by its undulating terrain of low coastal hills with wide, clean roads and busy commercial alleys. India's Father of Nation Mahatma Gandhi had referred and designated this lovely beach side city built on hills as the "Ever Green City of India". With almost 745,000 inhabitants at the 2001 census, the city itself is the largest and most populous city in Kerala; the wider urban agglomeration has a population of about one million.
The city is the State Capital and houses several Central and State Government offices, organizations and companies. Apart from being the political nerve center of Kerala, it is also a major academic hub and is home to several premier educational institutions including the Kerala University, and to many science and technology institutions, the most prominent being the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC). The city also has the first Information technology park of its kind and first Biotechnology Center, Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB) of its kind in India. Situated near Kazhakoottam, Technopark is home to many of the world's leading technology companies. (more...)
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Adi Shankara, also known as Ādi Śaṅkarācārya ("the first Shankara in his lineage"), c. 788 – 820 CE, was the first philosopher to consolidate the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta, a sub-school of Vedanta. His teachings are based on the unity of the soul and God, in which God is viewed as simultaneously personal and attributeless. In the Smārta tradition, Adi Shankara is regarded as an incarnation of Shiva.
Adi Shankara toured India with the purpose of propagating his teachings through discourses and debates with other philosophers. He founded four mathas ("abbeys") which played a key role in the historical development and spread of Hinduism and Advaita Vedanta. Adi Shankara was the founder of the Dashanami monastic order and the Shanmata tradition of worship. His works in Sanskrit, all of which are extant today, concern themselves with establishing the doctrine of Advaita (Sanskrit, "Non-dualism"). Adi Shankara quotes extensively from the Upanishads and other Hindu scriptures in forming his teachings. He also includes polemics against opposing schools of thought like Samkhya and Buddhism in his works. (more...)
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India is a large multicultural country in South Asia, with a population of over one billion. The Indian economy is the fourth largest in the world in terms of purchasing power parity and is the world's second-fastest growing economy. India is also the second most populous country in the world, and the world's largest democracy. India has grown significantly, in terms of both population and strategic importance, in the last 20 years. It has also emerged as an important regional power, with one of the world's largest militaries and a declared nuclear weapons capability. Strategically located in Asia, constituting most of the Indian subcontinent, India straddles many busy trade routes. It shares its borders with Pakistan, the People's Republic of China, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Afghanistan. Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Indonesia are the nearby island nations in the Indian Ocean. Home to some of the most ancient civilizations in the world, India was formally ruled by the British for almost 90 years before gaining independence in 1947.(more...)
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The Saint Thomas Christians are a group of Christians from the Malabar coast (now Kerala) in South India, who follow Syriac Christianity. The different groups and denominations within the St Thomas Christians together form the Nasrani people. Their tradition goes back to the very beginnings of first century Christian thought, and the seven churches that are believed to have been established by St. Thomas the Apostle. The Nasranis are an ethnic people and in that sense a single community. However the Nasranis have various denominations as a result of Portuguese persecution. As an ethnic community they refer to themselves as Nasranis referring to the common cultural heritage and cultural tradition. However as a religious group they refer to themselves as the Mar Thoma Khristianis or in English as Saint Thomas Christians referring to their religious tradition, despite a common ancestry of being the descendants of the early Mar Thoma church or Saint Thomas tradition of Christianity.(more...)
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K. R. Narayanan (4 February 1921 — 9 November 2005) was the tenth President of the Republic of India. He is the only Dalit and the only Malayali to have held the Presidency. Born in the southern state of Kerala, and after a brief stint with journalism and studying political science at the London School of Economics with the assistance of a scholarship, Narayanan began his political career in India as a member of the Indian Foreign Service under the Nehru administration. He has served as ambassador to Japan, United Kingdom, Thailand, Turkey, People's Republic of China and United States of America and was referred by Nehru as "the best diplomat of the country". He entered politics at Indira Gandhi's request and won three successive general elections to the Lok Sabha and has served as a Minister of state in the Union cabinet under Rajiv Gandhi. Elected as Vice-President in 1992, Narayanan went on to become the President of India in 1997. (more...)
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Technopark is an industrial park in Thiruvananthapuram, India dedicated to electronics, software, and other Information Technology (IT) ventures. It is the first and largest industrial park in India. Launched in 1990, Technopark currently has 3.2 million square feet (310,000 square meters) of built-up space. Technopark is home to over 110 companies, which employ more than 15,000 professionals. They include one CMMI level 5 and PCMM level 5 company, four CMM Level 5, two CMM Level 3 and several ISO 9001 certified companies. Technopark is promoted by the Government of Kerala, with a mandate to promote entrepreneurship and employment in the region. The policy of economic liberalisation initiated by the government of India in 1991 and the rapid growth of the global software industry during the 1990s has substantially contributed to the growth of Technopark. Over 70% of Kerala's IT exports are from Technopark.
The units in Technopark include domestic firms, joint ventures and subsidiaries of foreign companies engaged in a wide variety of activities, which include embedded software development, smart card technology, enterprise resource planning (ERP), process control software design, engineering and computer-aided design software development, IT Enabled Services (ITES), process re-engineering, animation and e-business. (more...)
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