By Debjani BasuHOLI – a famous and very popular Hindu spring festival in Northern India is celebrated by all ages and it has an interesting legend behind it. It is celebrated on a full moon day and is a colourful ardour to win the blessings of God for good harvests and fertility of the land.
This festival is also known as the “Festival of colours”. Different types of powdered colours and water guns filled with coloured water are used to soak and colour everyone in range. I personally indulged myself in lot of water and colour splashing. Every year I used to have an exhilarating experience of playing Holi. I used to have super- soaker and water balloon war and everybody readily shared their coloured powders and seemed to be as happy of being painted than painting others.
This year I thought Holi will be boring as the anti-pollution laws in UK are strict and the drizzly weather a spoilsport. But soon my misconceptions were cleared as I played Holi on 11th March, here in Sheffield with a wild gang of 60 people. We were being invited by some students of University of Sheffield to Weston Park to celebrate Holi. They greeted us in the friendly Holi way: smearing colour on our faces with hands, hugging and wishing "Happy Holi!”. After the welcoming hugs someone asked in a playful voice: "You want to see real Holi? ;-)". A moment later we found ourselves in a small pool of colours where apparently all our hosts also had been once. That gave a good base paint for our clothes, so we continued by applying more colours to make it look better, singing and dancing on the lawn. As the time passed more people came and were equally dragged into the group.
After playing Holi for about 2 hours we were looking like painted ghosts. Slowly slowly, the session came to an end and we returned back home drenched in the spirit of Holi. This was one of the most enjoyable Holi I played in my whole life though with a strong dash of nostalgia.
This festival is also known as the “Festival of colours”. Different types of powdered colours and water guns filled with coloured water are used to soak and colour everyone in range. I personally indulged myself in lot of water and colour splashing. Every year I used to have an exhilarating experience of playing Holi. I used to have super- soaker and water balloon war and everybody readily shared their coloured powders and seemed to be as happy of being painted than painting others.
This year I thought Holi will be boring as the anti-pollution laws in UK are strict and the drizzly weather a spoilsport. But soon my misconceptions were cleared as I played Holi on 11th March, here in Sheffield with a wild gang of 60 people. We were being invited by some students of University of Sheffield to Weston Park to celebrate Holi. They greeted us in the friendly Holi way: smearing colour on our faces with hands, hugging and wishing "Happy Holi!”. After the welcoming hugs someone asked in a playful voice: "You want to see real Holi? ;-)". A moment later we found ourselves in a small pool of colours where apparently all our hosts also had been once. That gave a good base paint for our clothes, so we continued by applying more colours to make it look better, singing and dancing on the lawn. As the time passed more people came and were equally dragged into the group.
After playing Holi for about 2 hours we were looking like painted ghosts. Slowly slowly, the session came to an end and we returned back home drenched in the spirit of Holi. This was one of the most enjoyable Holi I played in my whole life though with a strong dash of nostalgia.
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