Holi!

Holi

The celebration of Holi is always something I have dreamed about, after watching old Hindi movies where the village all plays Holi and sings a song together. For those of you who don’t know Holi is an Indian festival that celebrates the triumph over evil and is the carnival of colors. On one specific day, besides the other traditions, people will throw a variation of colored powder at each other in celebration. To make it extremely dirty, they start to add water to the color and establish a real color festival right on one’s clothes.

I got the opportunity to celebrate Holi with my wonderful friends here in Hyderabad. Vikram went through a lot of hassle to set up Holi for all of us. Our day began with my friend Arjun invading my doorstep covered in colors. I became incredibly rude and made him sit outside as to not stain my house. My neighbor Mona called me over under house issues pretence and surprised me with color on my face. We continued to meet up with the rest of our friends and head to the first party. On the way, sitting on my friend’s motorcycle, I could see the city covered in colors. Adults on the street walked around with stained clothes, the roads were filled with colored water, and kids were holding water bottles with colored water ready to squirt any passer. The auto rickshaws were even covered with an array of colors. As we arrived at the first party I was immediately drenched in colors, then a bucket of colored water. No point in trying to slowly progress into the games I guess. After an hour or two of attacking each other with colors and water we progressed onto the next party, where the same continued. After which a group of 20 people continues to relax, play games and talk.

Finally later on in the evening we came home to the start of Hyderabad rain. As we go down my gullie (small street) we see vendors selling colors and decide to buy a pack and continue to attack each other, in the rain on my roof. We do not have buckets of water but the rain seems to be helping us. By the end of this fight my teeth were officially colored green and pink since everyone decided it was necessary to attack my face. After the fact I had to take a 45 minute shower to look even semi decent. My friend Shilpa and I went to dinner and everyone in the restaurant had post shower stains on their hands and faces. Fun times man!

Rest of the pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2221578&l=ab118&id=6011342