Rangoli Season!

Today is Onam. So, Radhika's mom invited me to attend the celebrations organised by the Malayalee Association in a nearby CC.

Today is also the day when I made (helped in making, rather) a third Rangoli in less than a month. About 2-3 weeks ago, I helped Aunty in doing two Rangolis for the International Malayalee conference. Well, first of all I was really shocked that the Malayalee community is so well organised that they have a World Conference! Kudos to their spirit of Malayalee-ness(??)!

I woke up really early that day, about 6.45 am and was ready to go by 7.00 am. Uncle-Aunty picked me up and we drove to Yishun where the conference was at one of the expensive-looking clubs! 

The first design we did for the conference was one that uncle-aunty had brought along with them. I was pleasantly surprised to see that uncle was also helping us out! I've never really seen a guy on a Rangoli team before. :D

It looks quite simple but it was quite big, and took us about 2 hours to do. I think the colour combination looks really pretty. :)

There was also an exhibition of Malayalee heritage 'stuff'. It was quite interesting! So we had to do a second Rangoli at the entrance of the exhibition hall. It was an impromptu design and I innovated with colours mix & match. Eventually the design looked like it was very complicated! Would you believe we hardly took half an hour to do this?

This morning's design on the other hand was totally my idea. Aunty had told me that there would be a Rangoli competition so I had actually drawn out some possible designs yesterday. But then apparently they didn't find enough teams, so we juz had to do a Rangoli for the event. Sigh! My design would've totally kicked-butt, even if I say so myself! :P

Anyway, so even though it wasn't a competition, uncle-aunty told me to juz go ahead with my design. I was kinda surprised because it wasn't really very traditional. Apparently to make a traditional Malayalee kolam (I think that's what Rangoli is called in Malayalee), you must use flowers and the design has to be circular. So I couldn't make my pet shape which looks like a shankh (sea-shell?).

So I innovated (and Google-ed a bit for some inspiration) to find what could be done inside a circle. :D Finally my idea of making a peacock inside did find some artistic meaning. And here's what I drew! 

Actually after I drew it, I realised we were REALLY short on both quantity and variety of flowers. Which meant serious shortage of colours and possibilities of mixing them up, but some-how we managed to finish it up with whatever we had. This Rangoli was the biggest of the three I think. I love the design. I hope I can do it again sometime, when I have more colour options. :)

I must say it was nice making a Rangoli after so long. Though, it was a totally new experience since the design was made using flowers. I got reminded of the time when we won the Inter JC competition! That was awesome (!) and more so coz it was my design! :D