Here are two more contests for Navaratri, other than our traditional Golu and Marapaachi doll decor contests: 1. Best Aarthi plate decorating contest for Navarathri. Here is an example of an aarti plate decorated by one of our members. 
Golu is the arrangement of dolls and idols on steps for Navaratri. This contest is based on the overall Golu decor during the nine days of Navaratri, this year. Good luck!
Please use the "Upload rangoli" option from the main menu, or, the following link to upload your files:
Please use the "Upload rangoli" menu from the main menu, or, the following link to upload all your files:
Some dates in history do not need to have a year tag. They are always etched in our mind. Such a one is September 11. It means 9/11/2001. The history of this country as well as the world changed from that date. Everyone has been affected in one way or other since that day. Be it removing the shoes or being touched at all the unwanted places in the body at the airport has become a ritual now. Today is the sad anniversary that marks ten years of the trauma. The common question on everyone's mouth today is - where were you on that day?
On the occasion of the Indian Independence day, greetings and good wishes! Here is an old poem of mine entitled "Pulse of India". You may read this and many more at http://www.uramamurthy.com/mohan_gems.html
Pulse of India -
Where can you listen to the pulse of India?
Where, with bowed heads and folded hands,
people greet the rising sun
Hi all,
How are you all doing? Schools are yet to resume at our end of the globe and we have a few more days of our summer vacation left. It is upto us to enjoy them to their fullest. After spending some time thinking about what could be done in these last few days of summer, this is what we’ve come up with:- What could be more relaxing and rewarding that going on a cruise with friends and family? Won’t you please join us?
When I viewed the rangOli drawn by Mrs vasantI ( at http://www.ikolam.com/node/23603?p=21195 ), I was really thrilled. It was indeed very beautiful. I thought I would recreate it in my own way. So I created a celtic knot with it. Then I cut it at four places to get the design of Mrs vasantI. Then I thought I would write a poem to fit in that pattern. There are various ways of writing nAgabandha and this is one more way. It is written in the metre called chaMpakamAla in telugu. This metre exists in kannaDa too. I am giving the full text and the meanings also here.
Most of the religious heads (maThAdhipatis) are preoccupied with preaching about God and reaching their devotees and teaching them about bhakti. But occasionally, there are some great poets too among svAmIjIs. Sankara, vEdAntadESikan and vAdirAja are some such poets. vEdAntadESikan wrote a book called pAdukAsahasram. It consists of one thousand poems on the sandals of God. It is divided into various chapters called stabakas. One such chapter is called chitrastabaka. In this chapter, various chitrabandhas are employed.
Almost all of our rangoli/kolam images are published in the site with a flash background in order to deter plagiarism (to a certain extent). This has worked both for and against certain aspects in the sense that this practice also prevents search engines from displaying our members' files when anybody runs a search on any browsers. We would like to remove the bit of flash protection that we add to these images, and substitute it with a logo or "ikolam" (site name) appearing on top of the images.
