Rangoli is a 5,000-year-old form of Indian folk floor art comprising ornamental designs with symmetrical and geometrical shapes.
Traditionally, coloured rice powders and organic, mainly edible materials are used to create the auspicious designs just outside the main door of a house or apartment.
Rangolis are drawn on festive occasions such as Deepavali, New Year, weddings, childbirth and birthdays.
The word “rangoli” comes from the Sanskrit “rangavalli”, which means “rows of colour”.
Designs for rangolis are usually taken from nature, with plants, trees, birds and animals as their themes.
Rangoli has been a part of Vijaya’s life for 60 years, since she fell in love with the art while growing up in her home town of Trichy in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. She is the youngest of seven siblings.
Her mother was a housewife and her father a school principal.
“I used to watch my mother create rangoli on the floor at home. The floors were quite muddy, and the contrast of the white rice powder against the dark brown ground caught my eye,” said Vijaya, who came to Singapore in 1992 and became a citizen in 2005.
A NEW LIFE
Two of her brothers were working as accountants in Singapore, and she and her family came to join them, seeking better prospects.
Rangoli art was initially mostly done by women “as a kind of meditation, like yoga”, she said. The rangoli represents the happiness, positivity and liveliness of a household, and is intended to welcome Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and good luck.
The first design she learnt to draw at the age of five from her mother was a star because “it is easy”.
“The upward triangle symbolises masculine energy, and the downward triangle symbolises feminine energy, and that makes the family,” Vijaya said.
In a nod to her roots, her favourite design to draw is the peacock, the national bird of India, as it is an animal that is “very calm and very beautiful”.
It is a daily ritual for her family to draw a traditional rangoli at the doorstep every morning.
The task used to be done by Vijaya, until an umbilical hernia operation in April led her to entrust the routine to Ms Hanny Oo, 24, the family’s domestic helper from Myanmar, who was taught by Vijaya how to create rangoli.
Vijaya is married to Mr N. Mohan, 75, who retired as a commodities trader in December 2023. They have a 42-year-old daughter, a 36-year-old son and two grandchildren.
In an effort to breathe new life into traditional practices, the couple co-founded Singa Rangoli in 2015.
The company takes rangoli commissions and run workshops on rangoli making.
She also calls her style of the art form “Singa rangoli”.
“Singa rangoli is traditional design using contemporary materials. My concept is that people should not say that they don’t have certain materials so they cannot create rangoli. Your fingers are your tools, and creation comes from your heart and soul.”
Household materials such as spoons, forks, ice-cream sticks, bangles and small mirrors are turned into works of art in her hands. Even pasta, pistachio shells and hongbao have found their way into her rangolis.
She charges between $300 and $3,000 for her rangoli creations.
Commercial organisations, educational institutions and public institutions such as community centres engage her services to create rangolis for special occasions.
Traditional rangolis drawn using rice powder do not last past a day. But her version of rangoli can last for years.
Vijaya, who is also an art therapist and educator of children with special needs, said that rangoli – with its many health benefits, including stress reduction, creativity and improved focus and concentration – lends itself to art therapy.
“Colours give a lot of energy. Even when you are sick, when you touch and feel certain colours, it activates a lot of chakras (energy points) in your body,” said Vijaya, whose favourite colour is blue.
The busiest period for her is the two months prior to Deepavali, with commissions, workshops and community projects that she is heavily involved in.
Vijaya is still healing from her surgery, but it has not stopped the active senior from working on rangolis past midnight almost every day, much to her husband and children’s chagrin.
“It gets quite painful when I bend, but when I’m doing it, I forget about pain,” she said.
Rangoli materials she sources from around the world are piled into bags and boxes in various parts of her rented semi-detached house in Upper Serangoon.
Like her stash of materials, her accolades have also stacked up.
The tireless artist – who holds the Guinness World Record for the largest rangoli, at 2,756 sq ft, created in 2003 at Whampoa Community Club – has 49 records in various categories in the Singapore Book of Records, and has completed more than 20,000 rangolis globally over the last three decades.
Among her firsts are the largest rangoli made of drinking straws, the largest made of pistachio shells, and the largest made of vegetables, just to name a few. These records were set in Singapore in 2023.
She is not looking to stop any time soon either.
For Vijaya, the art of rangoli transcends language and race, and she hopes that “people of any culture can come and learn the art form and its value”.
Known as rangoli “laoshi” (teacher in Mandarin) to her students, Vijaya has made it her life’s goal to preserve and promote this traditional art for future generations and transform and adapt rangoli art to the evolving world.
As Deepavali celebrates the triumph of light over darkness, perhaps it is poetic coincidence that her name means victory in Sanskrit.
