Holi: Rites of Spring

Today was the festival of Holi here in India. It's the festival of colors, which marks the beginning of spring, and it's celebrated with a special kind of vigor in Northern India. Let me try to capture the vividness of the last twenty-four hours in words (and a few pictures).

Yesterday was Chhoti Holi ("Little" Holi), which is just a prelude to the celebration. Society still functions as usual, with perhaps a water balloon thrown here and there or some school children running by with colorful faces. In the evening, neighborhoods or families perform a small puja, or offering. All of us in the residence (as well as three homestay students) went to the Chhoti Holi ceremony for Neeti Bagh in our park. There was a giant bonfire fueled by tree

 trunks and cow dung patties that shot flames about twelve feet in the air when it was first lit. It looked like this once it calmed down a bit:

It was still a very large far - note the people standing a good ten to fifteen feet away because it's so hot.

So after the bonfire was lit, people began to circumambulate the fire, praying, asking for forgiveness of sins, and making wishes for the coming year. The neighborhood association provided grains for tossing into the fire as part of this process (typically, fire offerings consist of things like popcorn, peanuts, sesame seeds, and puffed rice). It's a very simple ceremony, but I found it rather moving. It's a very intimate setting, and it consists of two fundamental aspects of life: fire and food. When you toss your handful of food into the fire, it's symbolic of burning away the evil parts of life. Regardless of culture or religion, I think that's something everyone can relate to.

After making our way around the fire a few times, we mingled with the neighbors and drank some chai (because what would be an Indian gathering without chai?). A short time later, we made our way back home and went on with our evenings. A quiet but very nice way to set up for the festival.

Today, on the other hand, was anything but quiet. Holi is a holiday for everyone, meaning no one goes to work, public transportation is closed until 2 p.m., and no one has classes. I woke up early to do some studying on the terrace (for the brilliantly scheduled midterm I have tomorrow), and around 10 a.m. I went downstairs to get dressed. Katrina, one of the homestay girls, was in the dining room armed with bags of colored powder, spare clothes, and water balloons. She and Kashika, one of the other girls from the University of Rochester, were talking about going to JNU. Since I had just applied my coconut oil to keep the colors from sticking too much and didn't have anything else to do before lunch,  I decided to go with them. On our way out of the neighborhood, we stopped to exchange Holi greetings and colors with all of the guards sitting by the road. They seemed to enjoy that a bunch of Americans were so enthusiastic about the holiday.

Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures from out and about at the university, since I had great fear about my beautiful camera's wellbeing in such lively and messy festivities. JNU was crowded and friendly, but far less scary than I thought it would be. The paper has had stories about various Holi celebrations for the past week or so, and they inevitably involve horror stories about people being tossed in sewers, having clothes torn off, unknowingly consuming bhang lassis or pakoras, or generally being mistreated. The JNU crowd, however, was all respect and happiness. No colors were flung in our eyes, no clothes were torn off (I was wearing two shirts just in case), and there was no pushing or shoving or harassment of foreigners. We experienced lots of well-wishing and "Happy Holi!"s and color-smearing from strangers, but it was all in a spirit of genuine fun. We posed for pictures, got covered in colors, made some new friends, danced a little, watched people turn trash into percussion instruments, and generally had a good time. We decided to leave before the party was over so that we could make it back to Neeti Bagh for the neighborhood celebration and lunch at the Neeti Bagh Club. We promptly threw more colors, ate delicious deep-fried food, had chai, and mingled a little more.

The weird thing about Holi is that it's generally over by 2 or 3 p.m. We went back to the house and I took photos of everyone, which will soon be up on Flickr. Here's an idea of how I looked for most of the day:

Imagine a city full of people who look like this, and you'll have a pretty good idea of the visual overload that is Holi. 

My roommate Rachel and I after returning home from the outside world this afternoon.

A half-hour shower, lots of scrubbing, and two shampoos later, I emerged mostly clean, refreshed, renewed, and looking forward to new beginnings. The simple symbolic acts of this festival are awesome - the burning and the washing away of colors are so simple but so powerful, and I think the fact that they are such basic actions is a large part of why they had such an effect on me. The whole festival is an amazing experience; it's one day when India is united despite caste, class, educational, religious, or cultural differences, and it's purely celebratory. Friends mark each other with color as a sign of forgiveness, and people often wear white so that these marks are more visible. The day was made even more fantastic by the fact that once everyone was multi-colored, it was hard for people to tell that I was American, so I felt much more like an insider than I do on a daily basis. The whole experience was refreshing.

I wish upstate New York wasn't so cold in March so that I could get this tradition started on campus next year. I plan to buy some colors and bring them home with me, just in case. :)

Tomorrow it's back to classes and my regular routine (or as close to routine as one can get in this city), then in the evening I'm heading off on an overnight bus to Udaipur with Reema and Paula. Updates towards the end of the weekend/beginning of next week.

Namaste.