March 21st and 22nd marked the yearly festival of Holi, celebrated with much gusto in the North of India where we happened to be at that time. The Holi eve is marked by bonfires everywhere and Holi morning is when the colours come out. People smear each other with dyes for a happy and prosperous Spring. And when I say smear, I mean smear. Faces, clothing, hair, nothing escapes if you are playing Holi for keeps. Adrian and I were caught in a little bit of street-style Holi when some girls called to us from a balcony and asked "Please, put your camera away. Let us throw water balloons at you!". I immediately scampered merrily (ok, ran in terror) to the other side of the road screaming "but it's my only nice kurti!" while Adrian played nice and let himself be a traget for their water balloons (they missed...). We were walking along the street and I was mentally congratulating myself from emerging unscathed when out of nowhere comes a water ballon! And then another! They do not hit me directly but splash my pants with yucky yucky Delhi dirt. I admit that I cried in the rickshaw at the thought of my nice clean Indian pants all mucky. I was worried that the colour might not come off since not everyone uses safe vegetable dyes.
The next morning at home in the guesthouse our hosts Ushi and Avni came up to the dining room and sang a Holi song and gave us sweets and painted our foreheads with colour. We also got to pick a Ganesh mini-statue for luck (Ganesh is the elephant head god who is said to be the remover of obstacles). It was really interesting and my favourite part of Holi.
Adrian pointed out to me that there were some advertising poster featuring Westerners in the Holi spirit, so perhaps it was a great prize to stain a Westerner, or as Adrian puts it "get Whitey". Who knows. My pants are fine.
The image is from the BBC website.
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