Holi, Holi, Holi

Me during Holi

Today was Holi, or as many refer to it, the festival of colors. Holi is a Hindu tradition around early March where people take colored powder and throw it on friends and family. The colored dyes and powder signify a new outlook on life, a shedding of the old for the new. In the past people used to burn old clothing or unwanted goods to show their openness to all things new (they had to stop this in Kolkata because of pollution).

My first Holi powder of the day at Erik and Adam's house

Last night Rachel (my roommate) and I stayed over with Erik and Adam (we ended up playing the Indian version of Candy Land with our own American rules and some added Skittles to make the game more exciting) in Salt Lake so we could head over in the morning with everyone to our friend Shreya's house for Holi. Leaving Salt Lake this morning, Erik and Adam's host parents put some powder on our faces in order to wish us a Happy Holi and get us ready for the day.

Me and Shreya at Shreya's house

After piling into the car we made our way to Shreya's house. On the way Becca was squirted through an opening in the car window with blue dye. Two young boys were standing on the side of the road and squirting cars as they passed by. Looking out the back window of the car, we watched a young boy throw a water balloon at a man riding a bicycle and the man almost slid off his bicycle and crashed (it was quite funny but I don't suppose the man appreciated it).

What a Holi face

Upon arriving at Shreya's she greeted us with more powder on our faces and then we went up to her apartment complex to meet her parents and eat breakfast. Before eating breakfast, I rubbed coconut oil all over my hair, face, and arms in order to avoid allergic reactions and staining from the powders and dyes used at Holi. In most cases, the dyes will come out of your skin and hair within a few days however, my skin and hair are rather light compared to Indians so I wasn't going to take any chances, not to mention there are certain dyes and powders (like the metallic powder that we saw in Shreya's room) which do not come out for a week.

Everyone is tired...well, except Steph who is harassing Shreya as I look on in an astonished manner

After eating we went up to the roof with our colored powder and proceeded to have a Holi fight. We ran around dodging clotheslines and throwing powder all over each other. By the time we were all done, none of us were easily recognizable and we all were laughing at how much fun can be had throwing things at your friends. Shreya had bought some dye that you mix with water and some of us had bought water guns so we decided to go down and join in the action with the younger children who live in the complex.

The whole group playing Holi

As soon as we showed up and the kids saw that we were foreigners, we had a battle on our hands. Erik went to go fill up buckets while Rachel and I started adding dyes to the water in order to fill our water guns. Turns out our water guns were defective and after awhile we just switched to using plastic cups (which also broke eventually). Some of the Indian kids were quite vicious and even started shouting to us that this was the British versus Gandhi (to which I could only yell out that we were American and had gained our independence from Britain too...seems that the Indian children only saw that we were foreigners and therefore simplified the whole Western hemisphere as being part of Britain, while Becca yelled out that Gandhi was non-violent and would never use guns, even if they were only water guns, to defeat the British). It turned out that if we charged the Indian children and yelled a lot even though we didnt have any dyed water or squirt guns, they would run away only to come back a minute later (Adam especially enjoyed chasing after the kids and scaring them away).

The "Brits" fighting the Gandhijis

The water fight lasted awhile and seeing as we were all soaked with water and dye, we decided to go back to the roof and dry off. We sat around for awhile and had a small photoshoot seeing as everyone was colorful by this point, and then we went to eat lunch. Soon after eating lunch we left to go back home and on the way we received many stares (men tried to stop me and Rachel on the side of the street to which we didn't stop because we were pretty sure they wanted to throw powder at us and they didn't look too friendly).

Finally home and ready to take a shower

After arriving home I scrubbed myself down as best as I could in hopes that I wouldn't be stuck looking like rainbow brite had thrown up on me. Luckily I got most of the color off my skin but my hair still has some rather nice streaks of orange (Senssue, if you are wondering what my hair looks like dyed orange, now is your chance to see!) I am hoping that with a few more washings it will come out and I will be back to my old self again. I think that we all had tons of fun playing Holi (in India they call it "playing" Holi) and it was an enjoyable day!

Kelsey's picture of me at the "photoshoot"