Karuppiah lives in a village called Kilakudiiruppu in Sivaganga district, Tamil Nadu. He is a student of Selva Vinayagar High School in Kothamangalam and is in Std IX. Every day he cycles to school with his friend Ayyappan. In February 2013, I had gone to the school and given a presentation on Mahatma Gandhi and a demonstration of the spinning wheel box charkha. Five months later when I visited the school again, Karuppaiah told me that he had made a spinning wheel with a wheel of a broken toy car and some wire. He showed me how he could spin yarn with this charkha using cotton from the cotton tree. He also told me that he has created a mobile charger from old bulbs and had made tools from old wires.
