The Ritual of Kōlams - The infinite Connection & Flow of Life

One of the gifts that has unfolded for me from these strange times, is new meetings with people whom I may not have met had it not been for the necessity to go online to learn. One of these remarkable people is Pavi Mehta, who shared this wonderful story with me:

Kōlams are the form of ritual art from South India . This one was created by a dear family friend, Kripa Singan, from Pavi’s hometown.

“The patterns of a grid of dots encircled by flowing lines are drawn on pre-dawn thresholds every morning by millions of women. The dots represent the beginning of things - the origin point of life, and the lines represent the flow of life, and a kind of infinite continuity. 

Traditionally made from rice flour the kōlams are food for ants and other tiny life forms.  They are also a form of blessing, carried from the hands of women to the feet of passersby, spreading an anonymous energy of auspiciousness and beneficence through the community in invisible ways. The next morning the ground is swept clean, sprinkled with water and a new design created to greet the dawn.

Kōlams like this one, are not created from a preset plan - there are an infinite number of ways that the dots can be connected. These patterns flow spontaneously through fingers before sunrise, in that thin sliver of no-man's-land where the visible and invisible worlds meet, where darkness and daylight press their palms against one another.

In so many ways I think each of our lives can be a kind of kōlam creation in itself - a fluid, emergent connecting-of-dots in a vast field that brings beauty and possibility to life."

Where to find more about Pavi's contributions to Life: www.servicespace.org

More about Kōlams: https://feedingathousandsouls.com