He has his finger on the earth's pulse

COIMBATORE: Sitting inside his residence in Tatabad here in the city, R Shanmugasundaram launches into a serious talk about rogue seismic activity near Japan, Philippines and Sumatra, warning that in the next four to five days, there may be tremors in these regions.
A bank employee by profession, Shanmugasundaram's passion is to analyze the seismic activity of the earth.He believes that such analysis could be used to predict tremors and earthquakes in advance.
"It is called the sun shadow deviation method where the position of the earth and its angular tilt is calculated by tracing the path of the sunlight on a daily basis and comparing it with the previous day's recording to spot anomalies. Based on these angular tilt readings, a series of complex calculations are done to locate the longitude and latitude positions of areas where there is a possibility of a tremor or earthquake by comparing the circumference of the earth and the distance from the sun," said Shanmugasundaram.
Shanmugasundaram is a clerk at the Catholic Syrian Bank and has been working at the Raja Street branch of the bank for the last two years. His passion for seismic readings is known to his colleagues who often support him in his hobby. Shanmugasundaram has put up a wall in one of his rooms and have made two openings on the wall opposite to it for the sun rays to hit the wall he has put up so as to trace the positions.
"The circumference of the earth is 24901.55 miles and it rotates on its own axis at an angular inclination of 23.4 degrees. But during the rotation, it wobbles on some days and then automatically normalizes itself. This causes the pressurised lava in the centre of the earth to rise and push at the mantle thereby activating tectonic activity. Sometimes, the lava succeeds in puncturing weaker points on these plates, resulting in unnatural seismic tremors," he added.
He has been tracing this pattern since 1996 and even started a website in 2000 on which he records his daily observations and also issues warnings about abnormal seismic activity.
Shanmugasundaram says his method does not require any costly equipment or an observatory but is based on a set of complex calculations made by tracking the path of sun rays. He also claims that the predictions made in this manner are about 70% to 80% accurate.
He is often helped by his daughters S Jeyashree and S Padmashree in his deriving these readings. His wife PG Selvi is a government school teacher in Kavundampalayam in Coimbatore.
"We also support him in his activity. He keeps himself busy with his readings and calculations. So, I get a free hand to run the home," said PG Selvi.
Shanmugasundaram also added that the sun shadow deviation method should be made more popular among the scientific community. He was inspired after he accidentally read an article on the sun deviation method and started pursuing it in 1996.