Blogs

We're ready to receive Diwali rangoli contest entries from the 27th (the day after Diwali). Here are the contest details:

The Contests links are available from the top menu.
The last date for aathi plate and the best-dressed-girls contest is Oct-25.

Here are the links for the Golu & Marapaachi contests:
Golu contest

Hi all,

Due to server issues, we're not able to open up the contest entries for voting tonight. However, we expect the entries to be displayed for voting tomorrow (within 24 hrs from now).

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

Our site turns 8 on the 13th of this month.

Please give us your feedback. There are some of the menu links to be re-arranged and a few minor fixes to be care of in the next couple of days.
Thank you all for your patience.

The title I gave may look a bit strange. It will become obvious after some time. virahAnka was a Sanskrit prosodist who lived during the sixth or seventh century. Prosody is the science and art of writing poetry. Prosody basically can be divided in two ways - akshara and mAtra. akshara Chandassu depends upon a series of long and short syllables in a line. mAtrA Chandassu depends on syllabic instants. The time taken to utter a short syllable like ma is one mAtra (I) or kala and the time to utter a long syllable like maa is two mAtrAs (U or S).

O beautiful swan, why don't you ask Her to explain me the art of drawing pretty pictures?
O beautiful peacock, why don't you ask Her to teach me the art of dancing?
O beautiful parrot, why don't you ask Her to make me write a wonderful book of poetry?
O beautiful veeNA, why don't you ask Her to give me the voice to sing melodious songs?

Yesterday, while studying carefully one of the rangOlis displayed, an idea struck me and the result is the possibility of an entirely new class of rangOlis. I will explain the basic principles in this blog and later on give a few more examples in the regular uploads. Let us take a small square with horizontal and vertical lines. Let us rotate it by 45 degrees and let us place such a square and call it 1 (Fig. a). Below 1, let us place another similar square so that the corners touch and let us call it 2. By the side of 2 we place 3 on the left and 4 four on the right.

Change, they say, is inevitable and is the only thing that is constant in this world.
Our colorful world here within iKolam is no different. Some things are going to change around here, and only time will tell if it is for the better or not!
We know you'll be busy in the season's celebrations, so when ever time permits next week please take a minute to drop into iKolam.

Today memories of my youth are flooding me. Those days, there was no TV or cable, only the radio, the All India Radio and the newspapers. One has to tune into the radio to follow the game of cricket. That too, a person like me did not have a radio or even electricity in the house. I had to go to a friend’s house or to the college hostel to listen to the running commentary. It is during this period that a comet blazed the Indian skies in the form of the Nawab of Pataudi, the last Nawab of Pataudi.