Kolam – Art without ego

There cannot be a more fragile art form than the Kolam (Rangoli of the south) Which other art gets run over by bikes, trampled over by visitors and vendors in perhaps five minutes after it has been completed? Or blown over by the wind and the remnants washed off unceremoniously the
very next day?

And yet the culture of Kolam continues to survive even
while so many others have got lost in the pace of life.

To the French visual artist Smt. Severine Bourguignon (on a tour of Tamilnadu state,Bharat, to research and compile a book on Kolam) this is incredible. Art without ego!

“To a person from the West, it is unthinkable. I would
have raged if anybody were to step over a design I created”, she says. The Kolam is a subtle reinforcement of the Indian belief extolled in the Bhagavad Gita – the detachment and peace accompany doing things without pride or possessiveness about the deed or its fruit.

Based on a report by Smt Hema Vijay in THE HINDU Metroplus March 24,2008