Holi ~ Festival of Colors

Last week was Holi, the festival of colors. This is the holiday from all of the Indian pictures you've ever seen with people throwing colored power and "paint" and are literally drenched in color!

We got two days off school, for Choti Holi (little Holi) and Holi. We got days off because "playing Holi" is serious business here in India and people can get pretty crazy: getting drunk, getting high, throwing eggs, throwing oil, throwing beer, throwing water mixed with urine.

Luckily, I played with my neighborhood and with my family, so there was no "dirty" playing.

The story of Holi is too long to put here, but you can find it at this link: The Story of Holi. Part of the tale is about a fire, so on Choti Holi, there was a little event with a bonfire in the neighborhood to start off the holiday.

We (as a family) brought things to throw in the fire / roast as part of the ritual.

Mom with the plate of our nuts and raisins and holy water to put in the fire.
Eye spy: See the little half moon pastry thing? It is this yummy, yet too sweet sweet, that has a  sugar syrup and nuts.

My brother Siddarth holding the bundle of wheat (that Mom grew in a pot on the roof)  to put in the fire.
Eye spy: Notice the color of his hands? Sid played Choti Holi that morning with some friends. Because they played so hard, his hands were already stained with color before the real Holi started.

The next day was Holi, and it was time to play! We had two stages to our Holi celebration. The first was playing and dancing in the park with the neighborhood, and the second stage two was driving about an hour into Faridabad to go to a family member's house. It is traditional here to play Holi at the house of a new female-in-law's house for the first Holi of her marriage. This Holi was the first one for my cousin and his wife, so we went there to play.

Playing at the park was pretty innocent. There were just powders being thrown and a few little cans of spray color. However, when we played at my family's house, we added water into the mix. I was absolutely drenched in color! It was everywhere. There were water balloons and color filled water gallons, and bags of color powder mixed with water and squirt guns, and cups for water.

I didn't bring my camera to the second stage because I knew I'd be too colorful to be able to touch my camera. However, below are the before and middle-stage-after shots.

                   

To visualize the true "after" state, just picture this color but 1000 times more! My face was caked with layers of green and purple and red and pink; my hair had so much red power in it that when I took a shower it was a waterfall of pink water for five minutes; my white salwar pants were pink at the end (and risqué see throughish because of the water); I had black and pink stains on my back from the color that drenched through my (now destroyed) kurta.

It was a blast! If you get to come to India in the spring, make sure to celebrate Holi!!!