Vanessa Hua December 31, 2020Updated: December 31, 2020, 4:00 pm
On New Year’s Day, Vijaya Nagarajan will make a
kolam, a rice flour design, on the front threshold of her home.
Vijaya Nagarajan, author of “Feeding a Thousand Souls: Women, Ritual and Ecology in Southern India, An Exploration of the Kolam.” Photo: Lee Swenson
Growing up whether in her ancestral village in southern India, a government flat in New Delhi or a townhouse in suburban Maryland she and her family celebrated each Hindu festival. They’d wake up early, then bathe and massage coconut oil and turmeric paste onto their bodies. Washing it off left a smooth, golden glow. And her mother drew the patterns before sunrise; the kolam is performed daily by Tamils to signify auspiciousness and a wish for the well-being of the family, the household and the world.