jkmrao's blog

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.

My attention was brought to this Hindu article http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/article2137709.ece which shows Prof. Bruce C. Berndt, Michio Suzuki Distinguished Research Professor of Mathematics at the University of Illinois, editor of the Ramanujan Journal, and a recipient of the Steele Prize from the American Mathematical Society (for his work explicating the theorems in Ramanujan's Notebooks) holding a slate that belonged to Srinivasa Ramanujan.

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Please DO NOT read this, if you're a very sensitive person or in a sensitive condition
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Mom, how do you want to name me?

Mom ...
I obtained my present shape with the brush of your thoughts
I am the little lamp in the temple of your heart

**** One was very proud of the kolam tradition, only as long as it remained in the woman's domain. For the male of the species, to indulge in this was taboo. **** When I copied this sentence yesterday, I began to think hard. It is normal to classify literature, music, dance and painting as fine arts. In fact, literature and music are compared to the twin breasts of the goddess sarasvatI. There is a two-volume book entitled "Women writing in India" edited by Susie Tharu and K Lalita published by the Feminist Press, NY in 1991.

Many a time, latAji asks people to introduce new books. Today I am going to do just that and also quote a few passages from that book relevant to kOlam. The name of the book is "Green Well Years" written by Manohar Devadoss published in 1997 by the East-West Books, Madras and the ISBN no is 81-86852-01-8. A few words about the author. Mano is a scientist-artist-writer combined into one. The illustrations in the above book were all by him. He is so good in line drawing in spite of the fact that he has no vision in one eye and the condition of the other eye too is not great.

Sunday is celebrated as Father's Day in the US. Leaving alone the commercial aspects of the day, it is nice to see fathers and grand-fathers being honoured on this day. While the mother assumes a primary role in bringing up the child, the father too has no less an important role in the child's life. Of course, back in those days when I was young, the father was a distant figure, difficult to approach and much revered and feared too. But the roles have changed during the last fifty years. Nowadays, the father is a friendly figure, easier to approach and talk to.

Happy Mother's day to all mothers (young, old and would-be). May your children remember you and love you always! May all the mothers shower their love on their children and all children, particularly on those who don't have one. In this connection, I spent some time and compiled a list of lullabies and other mother-child songs from many languages. Add to this your own selection and if any link does not work, please inform me and I will make the necessary corrections.

On the seventh of May, everybody is a Bengali - 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranth Tagore

The other day, I told you about how we can draw lines and reflect the lines on them and go back around the dot. There is one more way also with which some of you are certainly familiar. It is to isolate a point and avoiding it. For a 6x6 dot structure as before, I have isolated four points (big red dots) and created a pattern that has four colours (two less than in the normal case). By isolating points as desired we get different designs with different kinds of lines and patterns. In the example, without colour, there is perfect four-fold symmetry (90 deg rotation).