HOLI Festival of Colour

Colour has new meaning after attending the Holi Krishna festival last month. Every few months or so, the Indian Krishna Temple hosts a culture festival full of music, dancing, culture sites, and last of all colour throwing. Attendee pay no entrance fee to attend the event, but there is a cost for the satchels of pastel powder of various colours.

This "party" is attended by a whole range of people, but mainly young college students go for the "Cultural colouring." Come wearing old clothes that you don't care about and be prepared to not see the sky or even your own nose as soon as the dust flies.

At the signal "Burning of the Witch", participants grab handfuls of powder from their bags and throw them into the air, at one another, and even on themselves. For about a minute or two the whole sky is coated with a thick fog of bright colours. When the dust settles, no one looks the way they came in. Head to toe is smeared with blotches and splotches of chalk and most of it didn't even come from your own bag of colour.

The highlight of this event is the pictures that come from it. I went with some friends from my ward and one guy suggested putting my camera in Seran-wrap so as to protect it from the chalk, but still keep it available for awesome pictures. What a great idea Ziroll!!! Before getting into the car, we dusted off and sat on newspapers and magazines.

The most tiring part of this experience was the cleaning process. I figured the easiest way to get myself and my clothes relatively clean was to just jump in the shower, clothes and all. That got about 1/4 of the colour off and then I had to scrub scrub scrub. 15 min of showering off, 10 min of hand scrubbing, 2 days of Oxy-clean soak and one cycle of washing with bleach and my once white shirt is now a faint tint of peach. I still wear it and it reminds me of a day of fun.

P.S. Wearing shorts and flip-flops is a must because it makes the clean up a load easier.