When walking around Chennai we noticed these chalk drawings in front of houses, most were fairly simple but some were more intricate and even coloured. I asked at the yoga manadrim and these were not chalk at all but rice flour. They are called kolams and are are drawn at dawn in front of your house to bring prosperity and to give back to nature as part of the lead up to the harvest festival Pongal.

A couple of coloured ones – apparently closer to the festival there would be more colour but we left a few days before the actual festival. Further north (where we are headed) they don’t do them so much alas.

The local bike repair shop with three kolams. I am guessing for each house and the business:

And a little shrine that I walked past daily to go to yoga which always had someone stopping had a quite large and intricate kolam with flowers placed in the centre: