A Houston artist’s rangoli became the new US Diwali stamp
Sangita Bhutada made a rangoli 8 feet wide from coloured powder and sand. It is now the US Diwali stamp, and the Postal Service printed 20 million.
8 November 2026
A rangoli is a pattern people make on the floor by the front door for Diwali. It is usually coloured powder, rice flour, sand or flower petals.
Sangita
Sangita Bhutada was born in Maharashtra, in India. She lives in Richmond, Texas, near Houston.
She has made rangoli, and henna designs, for nearly 30 years.
The rangoli
The Postal Service asked her more than a year before the stamp came out. She sent a dozen sketches.
For the stamp she made a rangoli on the floor, 8 feet across. She used starch-based coloured powder and sand in blue, orange, green, red and white.
Bijay Dixit, a photographer in Houston, took the picture. The stamp’s designer, Jennifer Arnold, set it on purple.
The stamp
The stamp came out on 21 October at the Indian Embassy in Washington. It is a Forever stamp, sold in sheets of 20, and the Postal Service printed 20 million.
It is only the second Diwali stamp in the US. The first, in 2016, showed a diya, the small clay lamp people light at Diwali.
Carry a story in five words
We run a game called Long Story Short: one real news sentence a day, and you keep the five words that carry it. Today’s is below. Do play.
How to play
One real news sentence. The job is to keep the five words that carry the story and let the rest go, then guess. Blue means the right word in the right place, orange the right word in the wrong place.
Yesterday: A 72-year-old stroke survivor who had never swum in his life at first clung to the pool’s side, but kept going back and in the end swam lengths. The five were 72-year-old stroke survivor swam lengths.