Girish Kaitholil
I am a Malayali living in Oxford, England, with a young family. By day I run laboratory platforms at the University of Oxford; in the time left over I build small reference sites — this one for the community I come from. Everything published here follows one rule: checked facts, stated methods, and an honest mark against anything I have not verified myself.
What I do for work
I manage the Spatial Gene Profiling facility at the University of Oxford, working in spatial transcriptomics and proteomics — instruments that measure which genes are active in a piece of tissue while preserving where in the tissue each signal sits. I hold a PhD, and I run the CosMx and GeoMx platforms for research groups across the university.
That work shapes how this site is made. A measurement you cannot check is not a measurement, and a calendar is the same kind of object: either the sunrise time is verifiable or it is decoration. Hence the method page, the published tolerances, and the fixture tests that stop this site deploying if a single nakshathram disagrees with the reference.
Why UKMalayalam?
The things that were obvious back home — which school, which shop, what a place is actually like — all have to be learned again here, slowly and mostly by asking around. This is where I write down what I work out.
The Malayalam calendar came first because it is the one thing this site can be genuinely better at than anyone else. Every Malayalam calendar online is computed for Kerala; in the UK, half of what it tells you — sunrise, sunset, Rahu Kalam, Brahma Muhurtham — is in the wrong place by hours. This one gives both, side by side.
What is coming next?
Two things I am working out for myself and see no reason to keep to myself:
- Buying for children and family. Kerala-style clothes in the UK at something other than £30–40 a dress — which sellers actually deliver, what the real price bands are, how the sizing works out.
- Reading a place. Schools and admissions, what a catchment really means, what an Ofsted report does and does not tell you, and the local history that makes a town make sense.
Both will be published the same way as the calendar: as things I have checked, with the date I checked them, and an honest mark against anything I have not verified myself.
What else do I make?
Sixty Day Club — a lookup that tells you which water filter fits your coffee machine, how often to change it, and whether a compatible cartridge exists. A different subject, the same shape: one question, answered properly, from checked data.
Is anything here sponsored, and what is measured?
Nothing is sold, nothing is affiliated and there are no ads. Two counters can run here, and one of them only with your say-so.
The always-on one is Cloudflare Web Analytics. It sets no cookies, stores nothing on your device, and cannot identify you or follow you to any other site — it takes nothing from you, so it asks for nothing. It tells me how many people read a page and roughly where in the world they are, and nothing else.
Google Analytics also runs, but only if you accept it. Its tag writes an identifier to your device, so the site asks first — the familiar cookie banner, with “Accept all” highlighted and “Reject all” one identical click beside it. Reject and nothing loads, nothing is stored, and you are not asked again. Change your mind any time via “Cookie settings” in the footer. An earlier version of this page said I had chosen against Google Analytics; adding it behind a real choice is also a deliberate decision, and the banner is its price, stated plainly.
With analytics accepted, I also count use of calendar sharing and imports, cinema filters and booking links, and the book’s sample, maker and print buttons. These are button actions, not proof of a completed booking or download. The action records do not include a child’s name, photographs, precise location or the text you enter. The cinema’s nearby feature asks for location only when you press its button; the distance calculation happens in your browser.
If any of that ever changes it will be said plainly on this page first.
Film posters and credits
Movie posters load directly from image.tmdb.org. That image service receives your IP address when your browser requests a poster. The image requests send no referring page address, and our nearby-cinema coordinates are not included. Blocking posters does not stop you finding showtimes or booking.
Film details and posters use TMDB. This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB.
What happened to the old site?
UKMalayalam ran for years as a Malayalam-language news and directory site. It grew faster than one person could check, which is a polite way of saying a lot of it was filler. This version is in English, much smaller, and only covers things I can stand behind. The old articles are gone rather than redirected somewhere irrelevant.
How do I get in touch?
hello@ukmalayalam.co.uk, or@girishkaitholil on X. Corrections to the calendar are especially welcome — seehow it is computed first, since some disagreements are conventions rather than errors.