“How an Ancient Indian Art Utilizes Mathematics, Mythology and Rice” https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/indian-rice-art-kolam
Atlas Obscura (May 7th, 2019)
“Global Women’s Rights Forum: Kōlam” http://sffoghorn.com/global-womens-rights-forum/
USF Foghorn (March 28th, 2019)
The kolam makers, women who feed a thousand souls
Leah Garchik. San Francisco Chronicle (March 10, 2019)
Demonstration at USF of making kolams, an Indian tradition to feed 1,000 souls
This Immeasurable Place: Utah chefs stand up to Trump and drilling in the Grande Staircase Monument; Plus: Women, Ritual and Ecology in India with Vandana Shiva and Vijaya Nagarajan. https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-march-5-2019/
KPFA UpFront Radio Broadcast (March 5, 2019)
KPFA Presents: Women, Ritual and Ecology in India: A Conversation between Vandana Shiva and Vijaya Nagarajan Radio Broadcast: https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-february-11-2019/
KPFA Radio Broadcast (February 11, 2019)
The Green New Deal on the Table in the US House; Plus Women, Ritual, Power and Protecting Biodiversity with Vandana Shiva and Vijaya Nagarajan. https://kpfa.org/episode/upfront-february-11-2019/
KPFA UpFront Radio Broadcast (February 11, 2019)
“Music of the World” https://kpfa.org/episode/music-of-the-world-february-2-2019/
Conversation with Joanna Manqueros, KPFA (February 2, 2019)
Conversation with Kris Welch. KPFA. (January 31, 2019)
“Feeding a Thousand Souls by Vijaya Nagarajan— Practical Thresholds to Abundance, Equanimity and Alertness.”
Wyndy Knox Carr, Berkeley Times (January 1, 2019)
Devi Laskar. Interview with Vijaya Nagarajan and Feeding a Thousand Souls Giveaway on Debutante Ball
Devi Laskar. https://www.thedebutanteball.com/interview-with-vijaya- nagarajan-feeding-a-thousand-souls-giveaway/ (November 17, 2018)
“Reading this book will take you across the oceans to understand in its entirety one daily task that dates back hundreds of years – the drawing of the kolam. The book is similar to the subject it aimed to study – just as the lines of the kolam effortlessly twine in and out creating a tapestry on the floor, the words and the pictures in the book flow effortlessly creating a wonderful tribute to the beautiful kolam. Step in with wonder to savor this treasure of a book.”
Nirupama Vaidhyanathan, “Kolam: Heritage on the Doorstep,” India Currents magazine (January 15th, 2019)
“Feeding [A Thousand Souls] is not only a compendious anthropological field study of traveling in South Asia to photograph kōlams and interviewing their devotees and creators, but a masterwork on how a cultural, gender-based worldview is being distorted and displaced by Western materialism, “speed and greed.”
Wyndy Knox Carr, The Berkeley Times (January 2019)
“When Shortage was Threatened, Gump’s Filled an Unusual Order.” https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainment/garchik/article/
Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle (October 22, 2018)
When-shortage-was-threatened-Gump-s-filled-an-13322141.php
“The kolam is the most beautiful and evanescent artistic form of the goddess in South India, created ritually each and every day by millions of women. This beautiful book is a treasure, bringing to life for the first time the wealth of meanings of this form of women’s religious practice.”
—Diana Eck, Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Harvard Divinity School
“This is a book of a lifetime, and it represents a lifetime’s work on Tamil women’s daily ritual practice, the artful threshold designs variously known as kolam, alpana, and rangoli throughout much of the Indian subcontinent. Vijaya Nagarajan tells local and diasporic stories of the kolam with passion, sensitivity, and deep ethnographic identification with the women whose generosity daily feeds a thousand souls.”
—Kamala Visweswaran, Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego
“This beautiful book of the kolam—small, ephemeral paintings only lasting one day, is in a tradition of works of art created by women out of their daily lives. Once their works exist, they belong not only to women, but to everyone, not only to the day they were created for, but for all time. I am grateful to Vijaya Nagarajan for bringing them to us.”
—W.S. Merwin
“[Feeding a Thousand Souls] is a rich, courageous attempt to recognize and interpret what the kolam means for the Tamil community.…As I read it, my own fantasy is fired. This book is a reflection on the plurality of places, that in a traditional culture, can be created by the people of the place through a marriage, a bed, a hearth, a place which reaches out not to the commons, but leans the inside towards the outside. If a publisher has the courage to publish this book, I predict it will sell like hot cakes.
—Ivan Illich, Penn State University
“When the sun rises, the Tamil woman lays out the kolam in front of her door. Beyond the threshold she creates a new space as an abode for the newborn day, the cosmic complement of the microcosms of the home. Vijaya Nagarajan has pioneered the religious interpretation of the kolam. However, in doing so, she has made a rare contribution to the variety of simultaneous perception of distinct types of space: the outside in contrast to the inside of the house, the body and the world, a mode of orientation that has withered in the space-age.”
—Ivan Illich, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany