Word: tamils
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Like Semenya, Soundarajan, 28, comes from extremely modest beginnings. Born in the village of Kathakkurichi to brick-kiln workers in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, she was a versatile athlete in school, competing in field hockey, middle-distance running and javelin. In 2004, an engineering college in Chennai, the state's biggest city, recruited Soundarajan with a scholarship to study computer technology. She was soon the college's star performer, setting an Indian record for the women's 3,000-m steeplechase. At a national meet in Bangalore in July...
...athletic career, Soundarajan has found a new calling in coaching, sounding content in a recent interview. She was attending a track meet in Pudukkottai, where she returned after losing her medal. "It was difficult but now finally I feel O.K.," she says with a laugh. The state government of Tamil Nadu awarded her a television set and a cash prize as a show of support after Doha. Soundarajan took that money - a little more than $30,000 - and in 2007 started a sports academy in Pudukkottai. About 68 students now train there, including two who she says won medals...
...doesn't help that, though long dead, the Harappan script sparks sometimes acrimonious debate in India over the nature of its origins. Scholars from southern India claim it ought to be linked to proto-Dravidian, the progenitor of languages like Tamil, while others think it is related to the Vedic Sanskrit of early Hinduism, the ancestor of Hindi and other languages spoken in India's north. And while cultural agendas within India have stymied collaborative efforts, the enmity between India and Pakistan has impeded archaeological breakthroughs. Ganeriwala, a desert site in Pakistan that possibly holds the ruins...
...years, Madhu, some 185 miles (300 km) from the capital of Colombo, remained well within the battlegrounds of the civil war between the predominantly Sinhalese government and the separatist Tamil Tigers. It was not until April 2008 that the military gained full control of the shrine; the Tigers, who demanded a separate state for ethnic Tamils on the island nation, were finally crushed in May 2009. (See pictures from inside Sri Lanka's rebel-held territory...
...believed in our Mother to bring us hope and peace. Now we can hope for a better country," says Singarayan Celestine, 70, a Tamil who brought his extended family to Madhu. His life had been devastated by the war: two of his sons were killed in cross fire, another went missing while crossing the front lines during the last hours of the fighting. "I am old," he says. "I can't look after my family for much longer. I have lost children to the war." Holding one of his grandchildren while the others played, he says, "We need a better...