Colouring their way into the record books

The Hindu dated 16 AUGUST 2007


REMEMBERING HEROS: Students of Velammal Matriculation Higher Secondary School, T.S. Krishna Nagar, creating a ‘rangoli’ mosaic featuring 60 freedom fighters.

CHENNAI: Sixty students of Velammal Matriculation Higher Secondary School in T.S.Krishna Nagar, near Anna Nagar West, on Tuesday sketched the portraits of 60 freedom fighters in rangoli.

They hope to find a place in the Limca Book of Records with the effort. Braving the hot sun and humidity, 50 girls and 10 boys of the school sketched the rangoli on a 10,560 sq. ft. area to commemorate Independence Day. Students finished carving out the portraits by sketching them in a record time of about three hours using four tonnes of Rangoli powder. The previous record for largest Rangoli was in the name of NGO Anandam of Chennai in April 2005.

That rangoli, looking like a sari, measured 233 x 40 (9,320 sq ft). The sari had a yellow border with elephant motifs and the pallu had Lord Siva on a chariot. The 60-odd students of the NGO took four hours and 15 minutes using 2,053 kg of colour powders.

The leaders crafted in rangoli by Velammal Matriculation Higher Secondary School included Mahatma Gandhi, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Jhansi Rani, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Dr. B R Ambedkar, V. O. Chidambaram, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Indira Gandhi, Veer Sawarkar, Dr. Annie Besant, Veerapandiya Kattabomman, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Maratha warrior Shivaji, Rajaji, poets Bharathiyar, Bharathidasan and Namakkal Kavignar.

“The photos of the Rangoli will be sent to the Limca Book of Records staking a claim to the record,” the school authorities said.