Rangoli – instant festive makeover with colors!

Come festive season and I am flooded with memories of my childhood where the entire street would get decked up with festive decorations and each house had a rangoli in front of its gate competing with its neighbors.

Parallel lines are used in this rangoli

Here, in South India, rangolis play a great part of the festive décor. Generally fine chalk powder is used to draw a rangoli and later filled with colors. Traditional rangolis are like joining the dots game where you place a certain number of dots in a pattern and join them through lines or use parallel lines to form a pattern. Of course, with times people are getting creative and use different materials like colored saw dust, colored salt, vegetable gratings, and flowers (a post exclusively on flower rangolis will follow). Unlike the north, rangolis are drawn in front of the gate or the door where it is believed to welcome Laksmi, the Goddess of wealth. Though it was mandatory for new rangolis to be drawn every day in front of the house, the art is disappearing in the urban areas due to lack of space and time constraints. I compiled pictures of rangolis drawn by school children in a competition held by the Rotary Club of South Bangalore. Take a look.