Floor Art of India: Rangoli, Kolam, Alpana and Mandana

In an Indian village the day used to begin with a drawing. The courtyard and the strip of ground before the door were swept, sprinkled with water mixed with cow dung, and then covered with a pattern in white rice flour or chalk powder by the women of the house. By evening feet, wind and birds had taken it away, and the next morning it was drawn again. This daily, deliberately impermanent art of the floor and the threshold is one of the oldest living art traditions of the country, and because almost every region has its own name for it, examiners use it for match the pair questions year after year.

Why floor art is drawn

The drawing is an invitation and a guard at the same time. A pattern at the door is believed to welcome Lakshmi, who is imagined walking into the house, which is why footprints and lotus motifs are so common at Diwali, and the closed, unbroken lines of the pattern are believed to keep ill fortune from stepping across. There is an everyday ecology in it too: a kolam drawn with coarse rice flour feeds ants, insects and birds, so the Tamil tradition calls it a small daily charity. The art is domestic and anonymous, taught from mother to daughter, and its materials are whatever the kitchen and the field give, which is why it survived while court painting did not.

The names, state by state

Kolam, the mathematics on the doorstep

The kolam of Tamil Nadu is drawn freehand in rice flour pinched between finger and thumb. A pulli kolam begins with a grid of dots, and the pattern grows by joining or encircling them; in the sikku or kambi kolam a single unbroken line loops around the dots and returns to its start, which is why mathematicians study kolams as examples of closed curves and recursive design. The kolam is drawn daily, but the grandest ones belong to the Tamil month of Margazhi, in December and January, and to Pongal, when the harvest kolam is drawn with sugarcane and pots at its centre. The Telugu muggu is close kin, and at Sankranti the muggu carries a cone of cow dung topped with a pumpkin flower, the gobbemma, in its middle.

Rangoli, Mandana, Aipan and the hill and desert patterns

Rangoli in Maharashtra and Gujarat uses coloured powders, and the Sanskar Bharti style, poured in gulal with the fingers in broad symmetrical rounds, is the one seen at public functions. The mandana of Rajasthan and the Hadoti and Malwa belt of Madhya Pradesh is different in method: the floor or wall is first washed with red ochre, the geru, and the figures are then drawn on it in white chalk or lime, so the pattern is light on red rather than white on grey. Meena and Bhil women are its best known practitioners, and its motifs are peacocks, tigers, footprints, the chaupad board and the swastika. The aipan of the Kumaon hills works on the same red ground: geru below, white rice paste above, with chowkis for Saraswati, the thread ceremony and marriage, and the Dikara figures made at Harela. In Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab the courtyard pattern is called chowk purana, and in Gujarat the lucky mark at the door is the sathiya.

Alpana, jhoti and the floral carpets of Kerala

The alpana of Bengal is painted, not sprinkled: a paste of soaked and ground rice is applied with a cloth wick or the fingers, and its curving creepers, paddy sheaves, lotuses, owls and footprints belong to the brata rituals of women and to Lakshmi puja. Abanindranath Tagore studied the brata patterns, and Santiniketan under Nandalal Bose turned alpana into a formal art for its festivals. In Odisha the same rice paste makes the jhoti or chita, drawn for the osa vows and for Lakshmi, with the elephant, the lotus and the stylised paddy as favourite motifs. Kerala does not draw with powder at the door but builds the pookalam, a carpet of flower petals laid in rings and grown larger on each of the ten days of Onam, and inside temples the kalamezhuthu, a large floor drawing of Bhadrakali or Ayyappa made with five natural powders: rice flour for white, charred husk for black, turmeric for yellow, turmeric and lime for red and powdered leaves for green.

Materials and motifs

Rice flour, rice paste, chalk or khadiya powder, red ochre, lime, vermilion, charcoal, dried and coloured sand, flower petals and the five natural colours of the kalam cover almost everything used. The motifs repeat across regions: the lotus, the conch, the swastika, the footprint of the goddess, the fish, the peacock, the elephant, the creeper, the paddy sheaf and the geometric grid of dots. Nothing in the art is permanent, and that is its point.