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As part of India Week, Medicine student Somasundaram Rajasundaram describes their experiences of living and studying at Manipal University in India.

"It was early September of 2009 when I finally received my tickets from the government of Seychelles. I was to leave for India in a week to study Medicine at Manipal University (above). Although I'm of Indian origin, it didn't help much in the initial phase of settling down.

The first thing that hits you in India is the general state of pollution, dust and the suffocating heat. Gradually a tolerance develops, but not without a couple of attacks of the flu.

Studying in India

The workload is immense, straight from day one. It taught me a lot about time management. The Indian education system places a lot of emphasis on raw memory, but thankfully my university also gives equal importance to application of the acquired knowledge. A hands-on approach is the buzzword these days, and for me that meant we actually got to learn human anatomy on a cadaver- something most other medical schools can't afford to put in place. Teaching and lecturers in general are of the highest order, with dedication like no other.

As part of India Week we are celebrating Indian Culture, Tradition and Life today. Here yoga instructor Adam Olivestone describes his amazing experiences of studying yoga in India. 

"India had always been one of those places that was on my list of ‘must-go-there-one-day' but honestly speaking, the fact that it's not known as being the easiest place to travel in, to put it mildly, as well as the guarantee from nearly everyone I'd met who'd been there - ‘If you go to India you WILL get sick', was enough for it to remain on the back burner. But then I got into yoga.....

I'll spare you the boring, indulgent details of why yoga had become a big part of my life but suffice to say that several years working in advertising was enough to drive me to look for something to alleviate the stress and spiritual turmoil I found myself in. After trying many different classes around London and further afield, Ashtanga yoga was the one that seemed to stick.

Ashtanga Yoga

Ashtanga or ‘Eight limbs' is a system of yoga based on the writings and philosophy of the ancient Indian sage Patanjali. It was popularised in the West in its current form by Sri K Pattabhi Jois, who passed away in 2009 and whose family continue to run the main Ashtanga school in Mysore, India.

Chairman of the Cobra Foundation, Patrick Shervington MBE, explains the work of this charity that has deep roots in both the UK and India.  

"In 2005, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the establishment of Cobra Beer Limited, Karan Bilimoria, founder of the company, resolved to form a charitable trust. Its objectives are defined as follows:

Cobra Foundation is an independent charity, registered in the United Kingdom, providing health, education and community support for young people in South Asia, especially through the provision of safe water. Our charitable objectives include giving help with Disaster Relief in the Region.

The Region extends from Afghanistan to Burma or Myanmar and includes the core countries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, together with Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Nepal.

For India Week we are focusing on Indian Entertainment, Music and Film today. It is impossible to look at such a topic without looking at Bollywood. Bollywood IS Indian entertainment in many aspects. So if you don't know too much about India's Hollywood, then here is a short introduction for you.

History and Style

Bollywood is basically the informal name for the Hindi Film Industry based in Mumbai, which is one of the largest centres of film production in the world. Although it is the largest in India, it is only part of the total Indian film industry, despite the term Bollywood often incorrectly referring to the whole of Indian cinema.

It all started way back in 1913 with the first silent feature film made in India, called Raja Harishchandra. Over the next twenty years the Indian film industry grew so quickly that by the 1930s, the country was producing over 200 films a year. It was in 1931 when Alam Ara became the first Indian film with sound, but not until the late 1950s when films started to regularly be made in colour.

As part of India Week, Farida Allana, an Indian student living in the UK, gives her take on Indian versions of two British dishes with some brilliant recipes: