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...
తీరాయిన సంపద ఎవరిన్టనున్డు
దిన దినము ముగ్గున్న లోగిళ్ళనున్డు
...
...goes the lyrics of C.Na Re. One of the favorite lyricists of my Dad. Do
really the homes with amuggu or kolamon their front entrance are blessed? As
with most of the Indian traditions, muggucould be a way of making people to get
up early in the morning and clean the surroundings. A healthy habit to keep
oneself active and in good mood which in turn may reflect on the family to be
happy. May be this happiness is what interpreted as 'blessed'.
It is a very native of India, especially Southern part to have a glimpse of,
women in the street sweeping and sprinkling water and then drawing designs with
flour at dawn. And drawing these designs becomes a passion from a daily chore
during the festival time of Sankranti. Sankranti itself has become a metaphor
for colorful rangoli or vibrant and large designs of muggulu. Though this
festival stands for a lot of other things as getting home the harvest,
celebrating winter and others, but the most significant blink for the people in
the city is colorful rangoli. The colors in rangoli has a beauty of its own but
the kolam with lines (without dots) is a definite classic of our culture and
heritage.
Kolam is like symmetrical equation. The modern versions of muggu include dots, which eases the depiction of complicated images or patterns for ones artistic expressions. The aspect of dots itself could have emerged from the tradition of drawing designs with simple lines. Still we could see these age old traditional kolams with lines during the time of Sankranti. It is much similar to folk art where canvas is filled with figures made of lines and some simple shapes if required.
My (paternal) grandmother could make a large patterns of these for Sankranti. The 2 or 4 parallel lines that make the design are drawn together with passing the flour from between the fingers of the hand while the knuckles face down the ground.
I myself could not draw much of these except for chariot pattern that is done for radha saptami.. which follows Sankranti. The actual drawing near the entrance with white flour on a flattened ground, brushed with cow-dung and water is a spectacular art in itself. Over the past years I neither improved nor learned other patterns of it....hoping to learn and share more of these patterns sometime... may be for next Sankrathi. :)
Kolam is like symmetrical equation. The modern versions of muggu include dots, which eases the depiction of complicated images or patterns for ones artistic expressions. The aspect of dots itself could have emerged from the tradition of drawing designs with simple lines. Still we could see these age old traditional kolams with lines during the time of Sankranti. It is much similar to folk art where canvas is filled with figures made of lines and some simple shapes if required.
My (paternal) grandmother could make a large patterns of these for Sankranti. The 2 or 4 parallel lines that make the design are drawn together with passing the flour from between the fingers of the hand while the knuckles face down the ground.
I myself could not draw much of these except for chariot pattern that is done for radha saptami.. which follows Sankranti. The actual drawing near the entrance with white flour on a flattened ground, brushed with cow-dung and water is a spectacular art in itself. Over the past years I neither improved nor learned other patterns of it....hoping to learn and share more of these patterns sometime... may be for next Sankrathi. :)
