Acing a kolam competition

The cheer that evening wasn’t about winning; it was about how a young boy stormed his way into a women’s bastion

During the 1970s and 1980s, when I was in school, kolam, the traditional decorative art, was so popular in Tamil Nadu that there used to be kolam competitions during festivals such as Pongal. If bullfighting and breaking the pot were the men’s events, Kolam competition was for women. As a boy fresh into his teens, I was fascinated with the men’s events. In 1984, there was an unusual buzz around the kolam competition which compelled me to witness it. By the time I reached the venue, the competition had already begun. Mothers and daughters, hunching and kneeling, created their art in boxy spaces allocated to them on a stretch of the tarred road. Like the others, I walked looking at art unfolding in each of the boxes. Eventually, I reached the last box and its participant who had added a zing to the competition that year.