The Kolam and the Bazaar

I had been walking through the streets of Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu. I walked through street bazaars and almost every shop had in front of it a Kolam. It was now a week after Pongal. What was the relevance of the Kolam? I looked in the library for books where I’d find answers.

The first book said, “It is a common thing in Hindu quarters of towns and villages that young maidens with cheerful faces are engaged every morning early after sunrise, in forming designs called Kolam in Hindu Tamil phraseology, on the floor in front of each and every one of the houses along the street”. This was in a book first published in 1925 - ‘South Indian Customs’ by P.V. Jagadisa Ayyar.

Ayyar further explained: “Ancient Hindus used rice flour to form the designs and thus fed myriads of ants every day which would otherwise get into undesirable places in the house. Further ‘Start the business of a day with a sacrifice’ is the Hindu motto. What other better mode of sacrifice could be suggested than this”. So, was the Kolam in the Bazaar street as much in the Residential street because of this Hindu motto?

It seems that originally it was rice flour or pulverized corn that was used for making the Kolam. This was replaced by powdered limestone. In every house, the woman’s first task in the morning was to sweep the house entrance clean, sprinkle water to keep down the dust and decorate the place with Kolam.

I then began to look up what the books said about Pongal. Fred W.Clothey (1983) in ‘Rhythm and Intent’ explains that “Festivals are celebrated in every society at appropriate junctures of the year in such a way as to make these junctures meaningful. As with rituals, festivals express the polarities in cosmic and human life: there is fasting and feasting, there is ushering out of the old, the welcoming of the new”.

“A festival of ecological significance marks an astronomical or seasonal event. The Pongal is such a festival celebrating the harvest and also the sun’s entrance into its ‘northern’ journey after the winter solstice. On the other hand, a theological festival is primarily designed to celebrate some event in the life of a deity or sacred being”.

There was more. Abbe J.A.Dubois (1906) in ‘Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies’ had explained the reason behind the making of the kolam: “During the inauspicious month which precedes the Pongul, sannyasis or mendicants, go from door to door about four o’clock in the morning, waking all sleepers by beating their gongs, warning them to take precaution against the evil influences of this unlucky period.”

And, what I read next was really interesting. “With this purpose in view, the women of the house every morning prepare a small patch about a yard square outside the door, smearing it with cow-dung and tracing several white lines upon it with rice flour. They then place within this square several pellets of cow-dung each adorned with a pumpkin flower. These pellets are supposed to represent Vigneshwara, the god of obstacles, whom they seek to appease. Every evening, these little balls of cow-dung, together with their flowers, are carefully collected, to be kept till the last day of the month. When this day arrives, the women put these pellets into a new basket and solemnly carry them away beyond the precincts of their dwellings and throw them into a tank”.

I know this blogpost is really getting long, but there’s just a bit more. “On Pongal day, women put rice to boil in milk on a fire. As soon as it begins to simmer, they all cry out together, ‘Pongul, Pongul’. They then remove the vessel from the fire and place it before the idol of Vigneshwara, to whom they offer a portion of the rice; another portion is given to the cows, and the rest is eaten by the people of the house”.

"On this day Hindus exchange visits. On meeting each other, the first words they say are: ‘Has the rice boiled?’ to which the answer is ‘It has boiled’. It is for this reason that the feast is called Pongul, the word being derived from Pongedi in Telugu and Pongaradu in Tamil, both signifying to boil".

So, finally, I knew how it came about that Kolams were made during Pongal time. Even though sometimes we don’t know the complete story behind some of our traditions, they still continue, they are still a part of our lives, our streets. If the tradition hadn’t continued, we’d have never known!

Bazaar - a layering in time

In a Bazaar, there is a layering of people and of goods. There is also another kind of layering – of spatial configurations that are random in their making and that metamorphose into a different complexity from one day to the next.

The vendor is part of a layering process that has on one hand, spatial elements – those that create his own territory and those that circumvent his territory. On the other hand, there are the changing displays that can be seen as part of one layer or as belonging to more than one layer. The vendor participates in a simultaneous layering of spaces and displays.

There is an organic development within the bazaar where layers may take the form of a shop, a shop extension, a pedestrian accessway, storage of goods, the selling space of the street vendor and the signage that belongs to the street.

One could define a layer in the bazaar to be an outcome of function – walking space, display space, storage space, advertising space, selling space or interaction space. These are layers that do not have a clear demarcation between them. The walking space weaves sometimes in and out of the selling space. The layers are individually and collectively occupied by different user groups at different times. The layers are formed, they interchange sometimes – that which was selling space is returned to the public domain and becomes a walking space and somewhere else, a walking space enters the private domain as it becomes a selling space.

The image shown here is the main entrance of the Kapaleeswarar Temple at Mylapore in Chennai. This is a centuries old temple that is today surrounded on four sides by streets lined with formal shops and informal street vendors. If one is standing in front of the east entrance gate, a layering is perceived where in the foreground is the flower-seller, in the middle ground is a mobile tailor with his sewing machine. The third layer is a sign board that announces the dance recital scheduled to take place within the temple that evening; the fourth layer is the stone wall of the temple and the background layer is the temple space itself.

Opposite the main entrance of the temple at Mylapore is this street lined with houses and shops. It is also the street where the Temple Car (Ratha) is kept through the year. A part of this ratha is seen here as it becomes a place of seating for autorickshaw-drivers, balloon sellers and temple priests. In this image, the two-wheeler parking becomes the foreground layer; the ratha and the people make the second layer; the vehicular access forms the third layer and the residential facades and shopfronts become the fourth layer. It is of course our perception of this urban space that generates the idea of a multi-layered collage.

In a bazaar, every vendor makes his choice about where to locate himself and how to display his goods and it is these choices that add to or subtract from a layer. The vendors adapt and simplify and bring about an urban experience that is an unconcious design effort - a spatial layering that ebbs and flows with time.

a sea of silence

The memory of the Bazaar is often of a recollection of chaos and yet when I look back at the pictures taken at the crowded, chaotic, noisy Groundnut fair last november in Bangalore, I find that so many of the photographs have people immersed in thoughts and in silence. I look at one of my favourite books, Tagore's Fireflies and there are these lines...

The world is the ever-changing foam that floats on the surface of a sea of silence.

I am reminded of Kabira Khada Bazaar Mein, the film by Shabnam Virmani and the words: "In 15th century north India, the mystic weaver Kabir spoke his poems in the market place, his spirituality firmly grounded in the public square"