26 July: Part Two

Catherine tries her hand at kolam

I love the neighbor in the back

CM Center: great nap space for tired crew!

Bollywood style dance from local kids--great!

These women made this look easy!

Probably shouldn't try at home

Dancers and proud moms from CM Center

Kolam: much harder than it looks!

This woman was a kolam master

She began with a huge grid of evenly spaced dots

I learned this is the proper kolam stance

Lou and me and our kolam teachers

another neighbor taking a look at the festivities

26 July, Part Two: Kolam, garlands, mendhi (henna) and traditional music and dance of the south

So the groups of F-H folks convened at the CM Center where we'd been cooking. For lunch we had the foods our group had prepared, plus a catered lunch provided by a local family who works with the Center. As Vidya explained, this is so we could have a "regular family lunch", not a hotel-prepared meal. The cabbage salad was sublime, fresh and crunchy and full of good stuff. I'm happy to say we all liked our own jaggery (unrefined sugar) rice best, but their sambhar will fill my dreams--a perfect balance of flavors that smothered my rice. Yum. I love the food from here. 

As we filtered away from the covered "kitchen" outside, we saw a woman making a large grid of evenly spaced, precisely rendered dots in white powder on the packed brown earth. Turns out she was setting up a space for kolam, an Indian art form that is practiced only by women and girls. Sujatha Thiruvengadathan, who is here from her home in Massachusetts (but who grew up in this area) explained the practice of kolam. It's an art form that involves making lines with ground powder of white stone. She says this is done every day, but between December and January, it gets more "extreme". The entrance to every house is swept. They mix cow dung with water and it keeps the dirt down, in effect it keeps the mud down. She says this technique is used inside rural homes to seal the walls. Once this process is complete, women create their designs using dots to guide the pattern. Kids typically start this pretty young, and they start with simple freeform pictures, e.g. stars and grids. As they develop hand control (dropping the powder in uniform lines) they are ready to move to the more complex designs involving dots. The whole purpose is to invite the goddess Lakshmi (the goddess of wealth) into the home. 

We were amazed that it could look so easy and be so tough to execute. With practice, I achieved a few thin straight lines, but I can't quit my day job. The women who taught us are of the local Dalit community, so it felt a double-honor to have them as our teachers. The Dalits are the group traditionally regarded as untouchable, and I was grateful to have them share this art and their gift (some of these women were GREAT at this!) with us. 

Now we have 2 stations going: one for mendhi (I'm in line) and one for making jasmine garlands. I decided to forego the garlands to get some pictures loaded. And I was fortunate enough to get an extra garland for my hair. I am now in love with the scent of jasmine.