Happy Holi! For those of you who don’t know, Holi
(pronounced like wholly) is often called the festival of colors, hence the
topic for this blog entry. I’ll give some background about Holi and then Rae
will talk about the Holi activity we had at the campus on Friday.
Holi is one of the two most famous Indian
holidays (Diwali is the other). Like most Indian festivals/holidays it has religious
toots, although today its celebration is mostly secular. The origins of Holi
are in this wise (well this is how I heard it; like most such traditions, there
are several versions).
There once was a powerful king. He became so powerful
that he decided he must actually be a god and insisted that everyone in his
kingdom should begin to worship him. All who refused were to be killed. It
turns out his son, Prahlad, refused to worship his father because he was a true
follower of Vishnu. This went on for a while but the king’s advisors told him
that allowing his son to live was undermining his rule. So the king decided to
have Prahlad burned to death but how? It turns out that the king’s sister (Holika)
was also very powerful and evil. She also had a cloak that allowed her to be in
a fire without being harmed. So, the king directed the lighting of a huge fire.
Holika took Prahlad onto her lap in the fire. Prahlad prayed to Vishnu for help
and Vishnu sent a great wind that blew the cloak off of Holika and onto
Prahlad. Prahlad was saved and Holika was burned to death.
So the first part of Holi is the burning of the
Holi fire. A bonfire is started and participants dance and sing about the
victory of good over evil. The next day people gather and “play Holi” – the part
of the celebration that is best known. People throw, shoot, spray, dump colors
on each other. These colors take the form of colored powders, paints, and water
colors. People run around trying to color one another and avoid being colored
themselves. The colors were originally made of blossoms of various plants; now
they are nearly all manufactured synthetically. A current concern is the lack
of quality control in the manufacturing of the colors. There are concerns about
lead and carcinogens in colors of low quality, which doesn’t seem to have dampened
the amount of colors flying around. I am not really sure how we got from
burning Holika to throwing colored powder on one another, but be that as it
may, them’s the facts.
Holi, as noted above, is called the festival of
colors and also festival of love. After the playing of colors, people get together
to socialize or make visits to friends and families. This lower key aspect of
Holi leads to another tie to the original story. After Prahlad was saved by
Vishnu, he and his father reconciled with each other. Now, during Holi people
are supposed to reach out to people with whom they are estranged or with whom
they are fighting and repair the relationship. After all if Prahlad can forgive
his father who was trying to kill him, we should be able to resolve our less
serious differences as well, right?
Well, that’s the background, here’s Rae with reflections
on playing Holi at the campus.
I have been told that Holi can be pretty crazy
and wild, particularly in some of the more rural areas and villages. It does
seem to be a good excuse to drink and go crazy with color, some of which doesn’t
just wash off and as Phil mentioned can actually be toxic.
On Friday while
I was sitting in Phil’s office waiting for the festivities to begin, one of
Phil’s managers came into his office and asked that all the female Admission
Officers be allowed to stay home on Saturday, as it wouldn’t be safe for them
to be out. Not sure why? Given what I know about Holi and the fact
that the real Holi days are today and tomorrow, not sure if this was a good
excuse for an extra day off or what. For
those of you who have watched Outsourced, based in India, you may remember the
episode where Todd’s employees made up a fake holiday in order to get an extra
day off. In any case, and I’m sure preferring
to err on the side of safety, the women were given the day off.
I digress, so back to the fun at the campus. It was interesting to me that the majority of
the students that participated in the celebration were not the Indian students
but rather the African students. Maybe it’s
just more of a novelty for them than the students who have experienced it all
their lives. I mean, how many times do
you want to have to clean color off of yourself? [Phil – I asked about this. I
was told the Indian students all have plans to play Holi with family and
friends, so they didn’t need to do it at the campus too. For many of the
African students, however, this may be their only chance.]
I was not sure what to expect from the students,
and could see things going a couple of different ways. Would I leave there unscathed or would I be pummelled? I am pleased to say that while the students
may have pummelled each other, they were quite respectful about asking me if I
cared if they put some color on me.
Thus, no color dumped on my head or smeared on my face. It was fun to watch them interact and enjoy
the festivities. After the coloring came
the food, of course, and then the dancing, of course. All in all it was a fun experience and I felt
safe the entire time. Yeah!
Hope you enjoy the pictures.
Namaste.
No comments:
Post a Comment