Today is the holiday of Sanskranti, the harvest festival, which is one of the most important festivals in South India. In Tamil Nadu, this festival is called Pongal and lasts for four days. Here in Karnataka, only today is a holiday, though the festival will also stretch on for a few more days.
This is a special time to celebrate the new harvest and honour animals which work the fields, like cattle. Cows and bullocks are decorated with flower garlands and their horns are painted in bright colours. Houses are given a good cleaning and old, useless things are discarded in order to bring in the new. Families get together and sweets are shared.
The festival was announced with the usual street processions, drumming and loud music. Long striped stalks of sugar cane are sold on street corners. This morning my neighbours' doorsteps are decorated with kolams which are much more elaborate and colourful than usual. Here you can see some of them:
8 comments :
In western and central India, people fly kites on Sankranti. Northeren India celebrates Lohri - the bonfire festival. I am not too sure about eastern India.
Fascinating art. I saw some more of these posted over at Hyperadad (sorry about spelling, it's probably wrong)...
sandy
Sorry for having been a bit late!
Hope you had a great holiday, and now a great week ahead...
Creative Rangoli Patterns are shown in your post!!!.
In India, in my mathematics classroom,some students made beautiful mathematical Rangoli Patterns. I have created a slide show, You may view the incredible work done by students in India. Here is the link
http://mathematicslearning.blogspot.com/2007/05/check-out-my-slide-show.html
If you do not mind ,can I use these patterns in my class?
Thanks
Hi RK! I've often thought about how math seems to be omnipresent in India: in relation to the musical taal system, the way space is used by motorists on the road (reminds me of a game of tetris) and then there's the geometry of rangoli patterns! Yes you are welcome to use the patterns featured on my blog in your class. Though they are my photographs, they're not my designs!
I showed these patterns to my students. They derived and explained many math symmetry relationships and enjoyed the photographs. Did you see their creations ?
You may add our " KHMS Planet Infinity" to your blog, so that many students who do not have resources for learning may get benefitted . In India, we have started with the concept of classroom blogging.
I'm back ro reading this wonderful blog.
Just been to Lanka and saw some of these there in Galle....
The Photos You posted are really great have a great time
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