Folk Arts - Henna and Rangoli: The Faces and Hands of Tradition

Interviews by Joan Rabinowitz

 

Henna Painting

Pragna Shah stands at a table set up outside the auditorium where the Diwali performances are being held. She is preparing and applying henna.

 

“I am Pragna Shah. I work at Hazen High School. This is the henna painting. Henna is a plant. They dry the henna leaves, and grind into a powder. Then add the water and make a paste. And, use for the henna painting. You make a design in your hand. That is from every part of India, they make designs. The make the designs from simple to intricate. We use this for every festival. It’s not only for Diwali. For an auspicious festival, or a wedding, or a party. It’s and ancient tradition. This henna, it looks green. But, once it goes on the hand, from the body heat, it turns orange. And, if you leave it longer, it gets more and more color. It’s really pretty, you know. Every woman likes to paint her hand and feet.”

 

Rangoli: With Color

My name is Rajan Raman. I’m from Madras. I work for the University of Washington as a systems analyst. I come from a very traditional family. In our family, for all the functions, they do this. I’m one among many brothers; I have more brothers than sisters. So, I’m the one trained to do these things. Whenever there is a function, this is my job to do it. When I was growing up, everyday in the early morning, I used to get up and do it in front of my house.

 

There are authentic designs. One is for religious functions, or any ceremonies like that. It means “lotus of the heart.” It is your heart which you are giving, offering to the god. We always put it in front of the prayer hall or where you are going to sit and pray. For Diwali, when we do the Puja, we put that “heart” one.

 

This is rice flour. You soak the rice, grind it, make a paste, and draw with the paste, with one finger. Then it has to dry. Once it’s dry, then you put the red border on it. That brings out the beauty of it. Plus, it’s very auspicious to have a red border, for us. Red is very, very auspicious. The wedding sari is always red. And, all the decorations will have some sort of red. Next is green. Green is fertile, red is auspiciousness. Anything yellow means sacred.

 

You take this flour, and put dots first. I marked everything so it won’t go crooked. It’s just curves and straight lines. If you know your geometry, maybe you can do it. You have to have enough control in your fingers, to put just enough to make a dot. Just enough to make that line. I’m rusty little bit now, I used to have better control than this.

 

In our country, for yellow we use tumeric. For red, tumeric and limestone. If you mix that, you will get the red color. And green. Any leaf, you can grind and make the green color. Here, I put the food color.

 

“In Bombay, my neighbors who were Parsis, they used to have rangoli every day, but their rangoli was made not by hand. They had these special tin molds with holes in them. And they put sand and then they would bump the molds on the floor and then a little bit of sand would fall in a pattern and then they would create larger patterns with that. And for Diwali, everything within sight would be covered with rangoli.” –Shantha Benegal

 

^ - next article: Performing Arts of India: Tradition Calls for Diversity by Ramesh Gangolli