Rangoli - A colourful Indian art

Rangoli is a traditional Indian art used to decorate the entrance of homes and worship areas. It is believed that Goddess Lakshmi (the Goddess of prosperity) would visit your home and bring prosperity when decorated with rangoli. It is either made with plain rice flour or with colours. Intricate patterns are drawn and coloured brightly especially on festival and celebration days. The logic behind using rice flour is that, it will serve as food for the ants, birds and other small forms of life.

Back home, group for 3-4 ladies and kids would get together and make huge colourful rangoli at the entrance of our home on festival days and everyday during the whole month of Margazhi (Tamil month from mid December to mid January). We would either start making it late night (around 12.00 AM) or wake up early morning (around 5.00 AM) and decorate the floor in the dark with mere not so bright street lamp (sometimes just torches or porch light). First, we would sprinkle water on the ground (tar or mud) and sweep it. Sweeping will remove stones and other large particles of sand. Water will help the pattern to stick to the ground and not be blown away easily. Then, the 'expert' lady would draw the pattern outline with Kolam flour (coarse powder of a particular kind of limestone) or coarse rice flour. Drawing patterns with a powder using fingers is an art by itself and takes a lot of practice to master. Then we would mix rangoli colours (very fine colour powder) with the kolam powder in coconut shells to make it coarse and be able to fill the pattern with fingers. Once the filling is done, the 'expert' would again take charge and border the pattern with white kolam powder to make the design stand out.

This is how I learnt to make rangoli as a kid, but never got to become the 'expert'. I participated in few rangoli competitions during college days, which helped me learn a few techniques like using a tea filter, using masks, shading, gradient etc. Still, never got to become the expert. Even though, I did not win anything (except the 3rd place in our college inter-department competition) worth mentioning, I thoroughly enjoyed each and every experience.

We made this rangoli (in picture) at our apartment entrance on Diwali day. This is the first time we made rangoli here in the US. I bought coloured craft sand instead of rongoli powder as it did not involve any kind of mixing and is easier to handle. First I decided on the design and practiced it a few times on paper with pencil and crayons to get the right colour combination. On Diwali day, I sweeped the floor and wiped it with a wet towel. I drew the outline of my design with white chalk and then filled it with the craft sand. Then I placed a small lit bronze oil lamp in the center. I was pretty happy with the outcome and clicked a few pictures as usual. After a few hours, I remembered what a good exercise making rangoli is from my aching thigh, glute and calf muscles.