Tamil Nadu - Tiruchi   

‘Kolam’ draws huge crowd

— Photo: M. Moorthy

Dotted design: Massive ‘kolam’ drawn by students and faculty of Srimad Andavan Arts and Science college in Tiruchi on Wednesday.

TIRUCHI: Thousands of people in Srirangam and Tiruchi had an opportunity to witness a big ‘kolam’ – one of a huge ‘temple car’ – drawn exquisitely in a 6,600 sq.ft. area by the students and teachers of Srimad Andavan Arts and Science College in their college campus at Thiruvanaikovil here on Wednesday morning.

The college Secretary, N. Kasturirangan, Director K. Prema and Principal T. Jayaraman mooted the idea of drawing the ‘kolam.’

In all, 23 students (both boys and girls) and nine faculty members drew the ‘kolam’ in the presence of M. Valarmathi and S. Mohanarangan, executive engineers of Tamil Nadu Electricity Board, Tiruchi and Perambalur regions respectively and T. Kaganagasabai, Cultural Coordinator of Bharathidasan University.

According to Ms. Prema, Director of the college, about 150 kg of white stone powder was used for drawing the ‘kolam’ with 65,000 dots and a length of 416 feet covering a total space of 6,600 sq.ft. in the traditional way.

She said that this ‘kolam’ event had also been sent to the Limca book of records.

She said that with the idea and help of the college faculty members Karikalan, Kousalya, Jayasri, Latha Sridhar, Sundaramurthy, Vijayakumar, Baskar and Satyanarayanan, 23 students – S. K. Gayatri, E. Mohanapriya, Mahalakshmi, S. Vanitha, Jothi, Krithika Ganguli, M. Krithika, Vijayalakshmi, Maheswari, Divya, Girija, Revathi, Anandi, Arulselvi, Leelavathi, Rajeswari, Sivaranjani, Divya, Deepa, Dheenadayalan, Mohamed Ali, Siddick, Subburaman, Balaji, Navaneethakrishnan and Sabarish – drew the beautiful ‘kolam’ which took five hours from 7 a.m. to 12 noon.

It may be mentioned that ‘kolam’ is an auspicious art of decorating courtyards and houses, hand drawn mostly by women and girls.

Fairly large ‘kolams’ are drawn in the Tamil month of ‘Margazhi.’

Rice flour or stone powder is used to draw the ‘kolam.’

The drawing starts with a certain number of pattern dots and lines going around them.

Many of these are completed with a single line going in an elegant but zig-zag way around the entire set of dots.

In the olden days, rice flour was used to draw ‘kolam.’

It was a means of feeding the ants that will get its day’s food from these works of art.

Drawing various types of ‘kolam’ proved the talent and creative imagination of the women.

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