Festival of India’s Science and Technology Heritage events concluded with a spectacular grand finale at Doha Modern Indian School (DMIS) auditorium.

NR Kumar, chief co-ordinator of Pride of India research project in Chennai, reminded the audience that with such a rich heritage as that India has, it is not enough for Indians just to claim honour and be proud of it. They have a great responsibility to preserve, use, develop and pass this legacy on to the next generation. He exhorted Indians to research the achievements and make them known to the world.

Dr Mohan Thomas, director of Birla Public School, was the chief guest, and Jayashankar Pillai, director of DMIS, was the guest of honour. The programme began with lighting of the traditional lamp.

He pointed out that plastic surgery methods propounded in 6th century BC by Sushruta, the first plastic surgeon of the world, are being practised even to this day.

Pillai regreted that children in the Middle East live in a cocoon and have only film heroes and film culture as role models. He said Samanvayam’s efforts in inculcating moral values in children was the need of the hour.

Festival convenor Shreedevi presented a detailed report and Samanvayam president P K Rajendran proposed a vote of thanks. P K Vishwanath compered the proceedings.

It was followed by a demonstration of the speed and versatility of Vedic mathematics (VM) by Dr S N Padiyar, a medical doctor turned maths exponent. Six children drawn from the workshop kept the audience spell bound by answering questions on maths without use of pen and paper.

Vedic mathematics is a technique based on 16 formulae extracted from Indian scriptures. Using them complex mathematical calculations can be done fast in simple steps without the help of a calculator.

After a 28-year medical career in his home town, Dr Padiyar has dedicated his life for propagation of vedic maths. He has conducted more than 200 workshops and 500 lectures on the technique all over India and in USA and UK.

He has published a book ‘Maths with Joy’ on the VM technique. After a series of 35 workshops in USA, VM has been introduced as a subject in one of the colleges under New York University and his text book was adopted as the study material.

Earlier in the day, final round of the quiz competition on the science and technology heritage was held at DMIS. DPS-Modern Indian School won the championship both in the Junior (Std 5 to 7) and Senior (Std 8 to 10) categories.

Ideal Indian School and Shantiniketan tied for the junior runner up. In the tiebreaker, Ideal emerged as winners. Birla Public School was the runner up among seniors.

All the seven Indian schools in Qatar were represented in the Junior and 4 schools in the Senior. Ravishankar, head of project reporting, RasGas was the quiz master, ably assisted by his wife Usha.

This is cache, read story here