That’s not a typo my friends, just a bad pun that I couldn’t resist. This past Sunday people from all over India, young and old, ¨played Holi¨. This really unique tradition consists of covering each other in colors. These colors usually are powders called ¨gulal¨ and ¨abeer¨ or powder mixed with water that everyone gleefully tosses by hand, throws via water balloon, squirts from bottles or shoots at one another via water guns.
I was wondering prior to Sunday how you ¨played Holi¨, as everyone says. Are there rules? Is there any structure to playing Holi? Or is it complete chaos?
It’s complete chaos.
Now, the basic exchange of colors on one another can actually be quite peaceful and touching. While walking to the university, where we started the day, the first colors put on us were from some people from an extremely poor area of shacks and makeshift homes. They greeted us saying ¨Happy Holi¨ and then put colors on our foreheads or cheeks and then gave us hug. At the university, it was a little crazier scene, to say the least. It is said that, ¨No other festival gives so much liberty to the people to let their hair loose and enjoy their hidden crazy self.¨ Almost every male person’s t-shirt was ripped off sooner or later where we were. There is lots of dancing, spontaneous group singing, and basically all around merriment. Almost anything goes.
As the day goes on and peoples´ bodies become that much filthier, the range of items people use to cover each other expands to include mud and pretty much anything else you can find to smear on one another.
Now the history around this holiday is a little fuzzy as I had a difficult time getting much of an answer from my work mates as to why we cover each other in all these colors, but why let a little history complicate a really fun tradition, right? After a little research, I learned that people from all over India celebrate different Hindi legends associated with ¨Holi¨. You can learn more about this amazingly unique festival at http://www.holifestival.org/.
Well this is the flat that Ashok, Jose Luis and myself have been living in for the past month and a half. We are in a neighborhood called ¨Safdarjung Enclave¨, which is in South Delhi. It´s a pretty central location to see a lot of our friends and get around Delhi for different activities...Below is our main living space...living room and dining room in one.
This is our terrace that looks out on the street. It´s big enough to hang our clothes to dry and also sit outside to either enjoy a book in the shade or watch the activities happening down below in the neighborhood.
This is my bedroom. Nothing too fancy, but I do have my own bathroom. Actually, each of us have our own bathroom, which isn´t too uncommon for the above average flats in South Delhi.
This is one of the monuments within Lodi Gardens, one of Delhi´s many beautiful parks. When you come to visit me (start making plans :), we´ll walk through this park...perfect for a relaxing evening walk.
And if you missed this up above...yes, that´s right. I now have a sweet black ¨Givson¨ acoustic guitar to play over here in India! If possible, it´s almost always MUCH, MUCH less expensive to buy domestic products, as certain imported goods are taxed a lot coming into the country.
