The world of kolams

AV Today: You have been studying kolams, the patterns which we see drawn every day in front of doorways in the villages, for more than 30 years now. What sparked your interest in them?

Grace: My mother, Lisa, ran Aurocreation, a garment and embroidery enterprise in Pondicherry where work was given to the local women to support their livelihoods. As a child, I was surrounded by women drawing traditional Tamil designs like kolams and rangoli to put on the garments. So, naturally, from a very young age I started to copy them.

Of course, I didn’t understand them then. But while I was still young, I went to the Kalakshetra Foundation in Chennai to study dance. For every performance we made these beautiful kolams – many dances were associated with a particular kolam – and I began to understand how kolams are integral to dance, to music, that they are all connected. Many of the dancers had books on kolams and they would explain them to me.

When I was older, I left Auroville with my sister to study in the Netherlands. It was difficult leaving because, like now, it was a difficult time and I felt like a deserter, that I was abandoning the ship. So I held on to my kolam work for dear life as I felt it protected me and gave me a sense of belonging; it was the only thread which connected me in a foreign land to Auroville and India.

In the Netherlands I was enrolled in a dance academy where I studied ballet and dance choreography. A lot of my choreography was based upon kolam patterns, so very quickly the teachers and the other dancers asked me to share what I knew about Indian dance and kolams.

So, to answer their questions, I started doing serious research on kolams. My mother set up a school in the Netherlands which she called ‘De Kolam’, and in her therapeutic drawing classes she used kolams, so I also studied them in her school.

What did you discover about kolams?

One thing I discovered is that kolams are related to mantras. By reciting mantras you alter the field frequency, and researchers using special equipment have shown that these make patterns. In each pattern there are ‘nodules’, which are places of silence, and the empty spaces around the nodules are the endless movement which takes place around the silence. The kolam is a visual representation of this; it is a form of sacred geometry which maps fields of consciousness.

So the kolam patterns are fixed?

When the male priests make them in the inner sanctuary of the temple, during fire rituals for example, the measurements are very clearly coded. But otherwise there is flexibility. In fact, if you seek perfection of form in making a kolam, the whole purpose of doing it is negated. The important thing is the process.

Each practitioner will bring their understanding to the making of a kolam: there is no such thing as a ‘perfect’ kolam. And once you start to know a person, you know what their kolam will be like. It’s their signature.

In fact, in the village I can see in the physical structure of a woman what kind of kolam she makes. The tougher ones favour the more mathematical kolams. There’s a saying in Tamil that if you make this kind of kolam, you have a sharp tongue and are always ready to dispute!

Which kolam designs attract you?

There are certain designs where the line loops and weaves around, and these really fascinate me. They act very much like a ‘sieve’ where certain forces cannot penetrate and only the good energy can penetrate. But you have to learn to unlock the code to master this, and I loved the challenge of doing this.

Do different communities have different kolams?

Yes. Although this is changing today, every community had a typical type of kolam, which was a means of binding the fabric of the community together because it was not shared with other communities. However, I have been lucky to penetrate quite far into their realm and been able to access the kolams of different communities.

What is the effect of making kolams? Does it change you in some way?

Absolutely. The first thing is that it quietens you because of the concentration and effort required. It regulates your breathing, your heartbeat. With prolonged practice it also awakens your intuition. You become more perceptive and receptive of what is going on around you, you gain more energy and you start to feel how the subtler energies are working in and around you.

You will be challenged by certain kolams, you have to work to master them, to decode them. The kolam has to speak to you, and when you start to penetrate it, it has an effect upon you. I’ve had these experiences where there was a sudden shift within and I began to feel completely different; the kolam had recalibrated something within me. And this can be lasting.

I think it also opens neurological pathways which are dormant or which we are not utilising to the fullest extent. At present, we are only accessing superficial layers of consciousness. Kolams are a whole coded language, coding consciousness in layers, and the more we enter this, the more integral we become: we have access to more layers.

Why are the kolams we see in the villages remade daily?

The word ‘ko’ means ‘rising, aspiring’, while ‘lam’ means ‘descent into matter’, so ‘kolam’ means ‘the descent of an aspiration’ or ‘the manifestation in matter of an ascending aspiration’. Kolams are precursors of manifestation, which is why they are meant to be ephemeral: you are not meant to keep them forever. This is why they remake them every day in the village, and why you don’t see many carved in stone.

However, in the Meenakshi temple in Madurai there are many beautiful carved kolams.

Do other cultures have kolams?

Kolams are most popular in Tamil Nadu, but in places like Angola you can find sand drawings which relate to kolams. The inhabitants use them to find out when to go hunting or where to find water. In fact, in the past the Dravidian people also used kolams for divination.

There is a very old saying that the lines of certain kolams are the traces the snake leaves behind, and that these kolams are gateways to the naga kingdom of the snakes. Snakes are the guardians of the earth’s treasures and the source of poison which is also healing. We find this ancient wisdom all over the planet; the knowledge body which is encoded in certain kolams is everywhere.

Presumably many people who make kolams are not aware of the deeper significance of kolams. Do they still have an effect even if you are not consciously aware of their intent?

They do but, of course, if you understand the code and their deeper meaning when you make them, the effect is more powerful.

Today kolams are becoming more widely publicised and popularised through websites and designs on t-shirts etc. Does this dilute their power?

It is true that more and more people are making them at random, and the fear of many serious practitioners is that this will dilute their power. But I think that as more people plug into and experiment with them, kolams become more multi-dimensional and something begins to be activated in many more people, even if they are not fully aware of it.

At present, through things like AI we are outsourcing what are, in fact, our inner faculties. We are outsourcing them to other forces that cannot embody them like us, and some of these forces are malevolent. I think kolams can play a more active role in us in reclaiming our inner faculties, and in recalibrating us so that we have more protection.

Is there a particular reason why you are offering a twelve-week kolam course in Auroville now?

Yes, I feel it is particularly relevant now because so many people are feeling insecure and need some kind of foundation. The beauty of kolam making is that when I do it, I experience the sovereignty of being in the moment: I feel complete, I have a sense of belongingness. And it doesn’t matter where I am. If I am vibrating with the energy of the kolam, I am in the flow of creation and capable of projecting images of what I would like to create in the world. And then all the politics and all the noise fall away because these are not relevant to creation.

We alienate ourselves by not allowing ourselves to create. We are all responsible beings, responsible for our creative force and how we allow that to flow through us. Nobody can take that away from us. That is our freedom, that is our birthright as human beings.