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We are now in the middle of the dIpAvaLi rangOli contest. Looks like the enthusiasm is reasonable. I always wonder about these and similar contests. Of course, America is built on competition. The motto of America is - be all the best you can! Unfortunately, in this country as well as in many other countries only the best are respected. The adjectives here are the biggest, the largest, the grandest, the richest, the best, etc. I think, you get my point. Many a time the first and the best are revered and the rest are thrown into the basket like yesterday's worn clothes.

iKolam has been a fullfledged member-driven website "By members - For members". We are proud to announce that we now showcase more than 4000 rangolis in our site! We have seen some real rapid growth the last couple of years. We are experiencing some growing pains in the process. We incur two types of charges from our service provider: Storage and network bandwidth. Both are not free. We have been reaching the limits of both storage as well as network bandwidth.

Boo is going to be trick-o-treating for two weeks! He prefers candies; dotted or freehand!
Better put "something" in his basket, OR ELSE...

We have had intermittent email problems during the newsletter dispatch process today. As a result, you might have received multiple copies of the Diwali newsletter. We apologize for the trouble.

The day of mallI’s departure happened to be two days after dIpAvaLi that year. Perhaps dIpAvaLi is one festival that is celebrated all over India, from the land’s end of kanyAkumAri to the valley of Kashmir. Typically we celebrate dIpAvali for nearly a week. It is one festival when the newlyweds return to the bride’s parental abode along with her husband and both are honoured with new clothes and gifts. dIpAvaLi literally means a row of lights. It occurs at the time of new moon in October-November.

I wish you all a very happy dIpAvaLi (deepAvaLi, deewaali and all other variants of the word). I am presenting here a poem I wrote a few years ago for your reading and thinking pleasure

Deepaavali-- Festival of Lights!
On the darkest night of the year
Clusters of light compete with stars
Ear-splitting noise permeates the sulphurous air

I am a creature of moods. A way to express them through various creative avenues is to publish them in electronic forums. That is what I have been doing for more than fifteen years. First it was the India-Digest and then the Pulse of India where I published samples of inspirational poems (including a few of my own) from all the languages. Later it was the yahoo groups Chandassu and racchabanda. Afterward it was the online Telugu journal eemaaTa where I published many articles on metrics as well as a few of my poetry and one or two short stories.

iKolam turned 6 on October 13th!
Some of our members had asked about the date earlier, so thought of letting you all know.