Friday, January 2, 2009

New Year Kolam

On New Year's Day we admired beautiful kolam all over the neighborhood, and thought you might like to see some photos. Kolam are designs made with rice flour outside the entrance to the home. Most Hindu families make a new one each morning (always the job of one of the ladies of the household). The kolam are intended to keep bad spirits out of the home, and welcome in good spirits. They are also supposed to be an offering to pests such as ants and crows, the idea being that if they have an offering outside the house, they wont want to come in. (In my observation, this seems to work for crows, but as for the ants.... ). Usually kolam are done in plain white powder, and designs range from simple to quite elaborate, and often highly mathematical. However, on special days, colored powders are often used, and the designs are often larger and more elaborate than usual. New Year's was a special day, and here are the results - HAPPY NEW YEAR all!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'd much rather see those on my sidewalks than the black ice we had this morning!

It looks like you had some great times over the holiday.
Happy New Year! Enjoy your family visitors!

Mary Jo, Rick, and Michael