Lakshmi Subbiah

Lakshmi Subbiah lives in Perrungatur, a small community in the rural rice growing area of Tamil Nadu. The main kolam event of the year, the festival Pongal, continues to be firmly grounded as a harvest and fertility celebration with plenty of rice to make designs from. Lakshmi worked in her mother’s restaurant before marriage, but has since then devoted her life to her family. Daily kolam making has been an essential part of this work, but now she gets plenty of help from children and grandchildren.