A kolam is a traditional South Indian drawing practice made by placing dots in a grid and connecting them with a single, continuous line. Drawn each morning with rice flour at the thresholds of homes, they disappear over the course of the day, only to be drawn again the next.

Built on rules of symmetry and repetition, kolams are generative systems that I grew up watching my grandmother draw every morning, and have come to hold a personal significance for me.

Experience a poem I co-wrote with my sister about my grandmother's kolams here.