Joining the dots

Musician, free lance writer and journalist Kusum Kalani dhi did not grow up mak ing the traditional south Indian rangoli or kolam at her doorstep every day. She admired her mother's dedication to the task, however, and took it on only when her mother Devaki Murthy couldn't stoop and bend to create the intricate patterns on the floor anymore because of health issues.But soon, Kusum was in love with the artform. The designs seemed to flow from her fingertips literally so, because making rangoli is all about controlling the flow of rice powder through one's fingertips.
“One day, my aunt went through my rangoli patterns, and she gave me a new idea. She said that these designs need not be restricted to pooja or the everyday home rangoli alone.They have a far wider scope,“ says Kusum. She realized that her patterns could be applied to various forms of art and craft such as jewellery design, saree design, mehendi decorations, kundan art, and home decoration.Kusum set about creating moulds and patterns that can be put to a wide variety of uses, including as illustrations in children's books.
Drawing rangoli or kolam is as much a religious ritual as a way of introducing some beauty and art into everyday life. The practice, however, is dwindling ­ not as many doorsteps and aangans have fresh kolams etched on every day as there were a generation ago. However, modern alter natives such as the metallic moulds Kusum makes, or many other commercially available moulds in plastic and metal, do exist and they help make creating kolams faster and easier. Even simpler is sticking on a kolam decal ­ with the design etched on to a piece of plastic ­ on the floor; purists turn up their noses at such expedients, of course. For people like Lata R Kalaimani, a California-based home-maker, the love of rangoli has become a steady passion. “I have been hooked to kolams from a very early age. I had the opportunity to watch and learn from my grandmother and mother while growing up in India. I used to collect designs and patterns in a jour nal. After moving to California, it wasn't easy to keep up with the tradition,“ says Kalaimani. She created a website, iKolam.com, in 2003 to share design ideas with fellow kolam enthusiasts, which quickly became an important resource with hundreds of unique visitors each month. “When I started the website, my whole plan was to create a simple website to share what I have learnt with my daughters. I did not expect the overwhelming response that I have received from visitors from all over the world,“ she says.
Narendra Raghunath, head of the department of Creative and Contemporary Art Practices at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology , points out that rangoli exists across India.It is known by different names in different places: alpona in Bengal and Assam, aripana in Bihar, pakhamba in Manipur, jinnuti in Orissa, mandana in Rajasthan, likhnu in Himachal Pradesh, kolam in Tamil Nadu, and muggulu in Andhra Pradesh. “These floor paintings carry a deep ritualistic value in Indian tradition,“ says Raghunath. “In art and design, they have a predominant role in the study of visual culture as they act as the representation of communitysociety cultural archetypes. The study of these patterns also allows us to understand visual anthropology, an essential tool in art and design practice.Above all, it represents the evolutionary progression of human civilisation: the ability to abstract nature and give aesthetic form to it,“ says Raghunath.
“I started learning how to make rangoli from my mother when I was in my early teens,“ says Shubha Narayanan, a communications consultant who lives in Jayanagar. “My mother would let me and my sister do some basic designs, and she taught us how to create the basic grid of dots that you can join together to form hundreds of designs,“ says Shubha, who is of mixed Kannadiga-Tamil heritage. These days, however, making a rangoli is reserved for special occasions such as Diwali, admits Shubha. “Frankly, I don't have time for it in the morning before rushing off to work,“ she says.
Making rangoli or kolam is usually seen as a `woman's art' ­ something the gruhalakshmi performs every morning after a ritual bath, her fingers flowing over the freshly washed floor as she joins the dots, before hurrying inside to rustle up a piping hot breakfast for the family . As this scenario becomes less common, purists and traditionalists sigh over its decline or reject the time-saving applications that allow its continued practice. But the gradual disappearance of rangoli from the doorstep signifies a deep social change: that of women slipping out of the gruhalakshmi mould and creating new roles and images for themselves. Making it less of a woman's duty and more of a beautiful, de-stressing creative process, then, may help it in its survival: there is no reason someone in a veshti or a pair of trousers cannot draw just as well, right?