There is the art you must go to the ends of the earth to seek and then there is the art you encounter in everyday life.
In Tamil Nadu, it is not uncommon to step out every morning and feast your eyes on beautiful white drawings on the floor outside homes, offices and buildings. The thresholds of doorways, gates and apartment passageways are embellished with a fresh design each morning before dawn, supposedly before the Gods descend from heaven upon earth.
These pieces of art often go unheeded by locals in the bustle of everyday life. Muted and quiet, they don&rsquot clamour for attention but hold significance beyond the ornamental.
&ldquoUnlike its northern counterpart rangoli, kolam is all white because it uses finely powdered, edible rice flour,&rdquo said Shalini Muthukumar, travel influencer and cultural consultant with the &ldquoEngal Mylapore&rdquo Foundation (an initiative to promote Chennai&rsquos cultural hub).
&ldquoOriginally, the purpose was to place it outside homes so that ants, birds, squirrels and other small insects can feed on it without entering the home in search of food. It is a sign of co-existence between nature and humans, not to mention a clever way to keep out pests. Kolam is drawn daily, while other floor decorations such as rangoli or even the pookolam (flower kolam) in Kerala, are typically reserved for special occasions.&rdquo
Keepers Of An Artistic Legacy
Visit any street with traditional Tamil homes in Chennai, Coimbatore, or the smaller towns of Salem, Thanjavur or Kanyakumari before the sun rises. You&rsquoll see women outside their homes deftly and swiftly dropping dots and lines of rice flour onto the ground to create unique patterns relying purely on skill, memory and expertise that comes with the discipline of an everyday ritual.
&ldquoFor several millennia, the kolam has been celebrated in literature, life and folklore as a legacy passed on only from mother to daughter. From woman to woman,&rdquo said Muthukumar.
&ldquoI&rsquom happy to say things are changing on that front, with men participating in creating, celebrating and preserving kolam designs. In Mylapore, we conduct the annual Mylapore Festival, of which the kolam contest is a huge draw. Over 12 venues are filled with spectacular kolam entries, with people visiting from all over the state to compete for the top spot.&rdquo
In Tamil, kolam aptly means form and beauty. The kolam is a quintessential part of daily Tamil life, drawn to bring happiness and success to people who live in the house.
While it&rsquos difficult to pinpoint when the kolam tradition began, the first documented use of floor decorations in Tamil Nadu goes back about 600 years, so it is safe to say that it has existed for at least that long. However, some of the patterns date back much longer than that.
The designs in the kolam are usually geometrically-inspired and symmetrical, indicating life&rsquos balance. Common nature-inspired motifs include lotus, peacock, mango and fish. Utensils like sacred pots and jugs and geographic shapes like triangles and pentagrams are also prevalent. All the shapes are closed to prevent evil spirits from entering the house.
How A Kolam Takes Shape
There is an entire process to drawing kolam. First, the area where the kolam is drawn is swept clean then, it is sprinkled with a mixture of cow dung and water. The cow dung is supposed to have antiseptic properties, while the water ensures the powder holds itself to the ground better. Once this is done, the ground is ready for the kolam to be applied.
&ldquoKolams are typically drawn using three elements,&rdquo said Usha Rani Krishnan, a Madurai-based homemaker who also takes kolam classes at schools and colleges. &ldquoFirst, the dots or pullis are drawn according to arithmetic principles to create a traditional matrix or grid that allows even beginners to draw the patterns easily. The padis or lines come next and join the dots wherever required. The chikkusor or the curves comes last. They weave their way in, out and around the pullis and padis to create the final, stunning design. Anyone who understands how to use these three elements can work out the patterns and create traditional kolams.&rdquo
The array of kolam designs may look similar to the novice, but the seasoned eye will be able to determine the origin, ethnicity and region that each kolam artist belongs to through their unique motifs. For instance, conch shells and parrots are typically used by the Chettiar or trader community from the Chettinad region.
Kolam designs have been passed on orally and through observation between families and communities for centuries. Over the last 100 years, many kept pen and paper drawings, but researchers have only recently started formally documenting this ancient art form.
A Design For Every Occasion
During festivals, the whole scale of kolam drawings changes. Wet rice flour is used instead of its dry counterpart to make it last longer. This is called makolam. In rural Tamil Nadu, festival kolams are a community-based activity, with women from every household gathering to create a giant-sized kolam.
A visit to the state during Pongal in mid- January, reveals large kolams in patterns of sugarcane, vegetables and fruits. Similarly, kolams in the shape of lamps and fire- crackers are drawn extensively when the Tamil festival of lights called Karthigai Deepam occurs a fortnight after Diwali. South Indian weddings also see elaborate and lavish kolams that use auspicious motifs such as mango leaves.
With time, the kolam has evolved and become more contemporary. Schools and colleges in Tamil Nadu conduct kolam- making contests, where young innovators explore various themes.
&ldquoThe kolam is quintessentially Tamil that cuts across socio-economic strata&mdash you could find the same kolam outside a corporate office, school, or fishing village,&rdquo said artist and sculptor Parvathi Nayar.
She created a giant 15&rsquox15&rsquo kolam titled &ldquoInvite/Refuse&rdquo made of trash collected from the mouth of the Adyar River in Chennai.
&ldquoI worked with contemporary kolam researcher and expert Mr Udhayan to arrive at a particular form of the pulli kolam (dot kolam) that was direct yet abstract, with undulating lines that echo the river. I also had undertaken a trip to the mouth of the Coovum River and was inspired by the kolams I came across at the temples associated with it.&rdquo
The Beauty Of Transcience
What makes the kolam so attractive is its transient quality. While the art form of kolam has undoubtedly endured the test of time, the actual design disappears within just a few hours.
As the ants fall out of their orderly line to devour the grains of rice flour as gentle gusts of wind blur the neatly-drawn boundaries, as sudden tropical rains misshape the dots and dashes, and as the feet of visitors going in and coming out eventually erases the entire kolam&hellip it is of no consequence or heartache to the artist. Nonplussed and unaffected, she wakes up the next day before the sun, ready to put out a design, anew.
