The Colors of India

I’m not sure why but I’ve been reminiscing about India a lot recently. Perhaps because it’s been a while since I’ve gone back and thus, my mind has decided to romanticize the notion of the country. Perhaps because I’m bored in Ann Arbor and India holds promises of adventure. Perhaps it’s because I am growing up and desperately long to hold whatever wisps I have left of my childhood.

And for some odd reason, I have missed rangoli more than anything. (In my language, Telugu, they’re called “muggulu” but most English words that describe Indian culture come from the national language, Hindi, but we’ll save the linguistics lecture for another day.) Rangoli are designs drawn with chalk, loose chalk dust, paint, or flowers outside the house, and less commonly, inside the house as well.

Simple ones are drawn everyday to decorate the house. My grandmother would ensure that by the time the sun was finished rising, there was a rangoli drawn outside. And as the sun set, the entire house, including the exterior, would be swept and a fresh one was drawn. She considered a house not decorated with a rangoli to be inappropriate and cold, inhospitable. When I came to the carpeted world that is America, the lack of the colors outside houses welcoming me only added to the infinite grayness of the frigid buildings.

Rangolis are ingrained into Indian culture at an inexplicable level. There are rangoli competitions and for festivals, rangolis go from simple chalk drawings to elaborate works of art. Women flock totemples to draw rangolis together. Gods and stories are drawn out. They become vehicles of expression and protest and love and tradition. Sometimes, I see my mother absentmindedly doodling rangolis on scrap pieces of paper while speaking on the phone and wonder how much she wishes to press and flick colorful chalk the way so many generations of women had done before her. Whether she thought our home was incomplete because there were no chalk flowers adorning it. Sometimes, I wonder if I had it in me, that inane agility of the hand to curve in a way that enchanted me whenever I saw someone draw a rangoli. I had tried it once, when I was younger, with loose powder. I sucked. I was trying to draw a favorite god of mine and He ended up looking like a weird blob. The girl next door giggled but reassured me that it came with practice. Oh. Okay. So when can I practice? The few months I spend in India every few years? Grr.

My mother still draws rangolis. Every festival, she goes outside and draws a tiny flower with some flour (loose chalk powder can’t be found in the States). And I think while that flower remains untarnished, our house becomes a home, filled with the infinite colors of a rangoli.