🌸 The Quiet Rhythm of Rangoli 🎨

✉️ Dear Readers,

🌸 While the festival season quietly finds its way into many corners of the world, I wish you—most sincerely—good health, gentle joy, and warm moments with those you love. Festivals, to me, have always felt bright, arriving carrying colour, hope, and a lightness that briefly softens everyday life. 

🏙️ In cities, festivals often pass like a cheerful day—an outing with family, a short journey to a familiar place, visiting friends, or sharing a good meal while the television hums in the background. Everything happens quickly, neatly, and on time. 

🌾 But in the countryside, festivals do not hurry. 

⏳ They linger. 

🪔 They arrive long before the calendar date and stay well after it has passed. Weeks unfold slowly—cleaning begins, sweets are prepared with patience, seasonal fruits and vegetables fill the courtyards, and houses are dressed in patterns and colours that feel almost alive. The rangoli alone feels like a quiet conversation between the earth and the hands that draw it. 

🎒 As a child, we were given holidays nearly a week before the festival. The moment the announcement came, bags were packed without delay, and we travelled to our village—where my grandparents lived and where time itself seemed slower. Mornings opened before sunrise, and evenings rested soon after dusk. 

🌅 During festival days, my grandmother woke even earlier—around three in the morning. She would smile and say it was Brahma Muhurta—a sacred hour when the world is quiet and the air feels new. She believed that anything begun at that hour carried purity with it. 

🧹 The first thing she did was clean the house with cow dung. It was never spoken of as unusual; it was simply the way things were done. The courtyard was swept clean, and a fresh paste was prepared carefully and spread across the floor. By morning, it dried into a smooth, cool surface, carrying a kind of freshness that no modern cleaner could imitate. 

🌼 In those days, this was more than cleaning—it was renewal. My grandmother believed that homes prepared with care invited prosperity quietly. The floor felt cool under bare feet, the air smelled of earth, and the house felt ready to welcome something good. 

🎨 Once the floor dried, rangoli was drawn using rice flour—soft lines, gentle curves, suns, flowers, kites, and symbols of harvest. Every design felt like a quiet prayer. No one rushed it. No one corrected it. It was perfect simply because it was made with intention. 

⏱️ Rangoli, I learned early, was never a hurried thing. It took time—sometimes hours—to complete. Knees on the cool floor, fingers dusted white with rice flour, and lines drawn carefully so they wouldn’t break. It was beautiful, yes, but also tiring. 

👧 As a child, I was always excited at first. I would sit close, watch the patterns grow, and help wherever I was allowed. But by the end, impatience would creep in. I remember complaining that we put in so much effort only for it to be washed away within a few hours. 

👵 My grandmother listened, smiled, and then told me—gently—that rangoli was never meant to stay. Life itself, she said, was like that. Nothing lasts forever—not the colours, not the patterns, not even the moments we wish would remain. Rangoli was made to be fleeting, so we would learn to notice it fully while it existed. 

🌊 When it was cleaned away the next morning, she said, it was not a loss. A clean floor meant a new design, a fresh beginning, another chance to welcome the day with care and intention. 

🎶 In our village, women gathered around small decorated mounds of cow dung—Gobbillu—adorned with flowers. They sang old songs, their voices carrying stories older than memory. They danced gently, praying for happiness, for marriage, for children, and for continuity. On the final day, the Gobbemmalu were taken to the water and immersed, just as gently as they had been made. 

🤍 Nothing felt loud. Nothing felt forced. 

🕊️ Back then, festivals were not events; they were experiences. They taught us patience, belonging, and the quiet beauty of doing simple things with care. Even now, when the season returns, those mornings, those songs, and my grandmother’s gentle movements return to me—unchanged, untouched by time. 

🌄 Those festivals and that way of living still breathe in a few places. In the days ahead, I will share more winter memories and rituals, unhurried, just as a village wakes at first light. 

💌 If these memories stayed with you, I would love to know which part felt closest to your heart.

With warmth and love,

✍️ Raasi