This festival being directly related to one celebrated in Trinidad and Guyana (called Pagwa), I couldn't pass it up. So Saturday afternoon we loaded up the car, and headed down to see what it's all about. The traffic to get into the even was backed up all the way onto the freeway exit, but eventually we made it. We braved our way into the crowd, went to pick up some bags of colored chalk at the temple (more on that later), but all the chalk had already been distributed so we had to go find some friends in the crowd to borrow from.
The festival follows a popular Indian traditional story in which an evil witch named Holika tried to burn an innocent child but was burned herself when the child called upon God to save him by chanting "Hare Rama Hare Rama Hare." To commemorate this event, a huge pire is built with an effigy of the witch Holika, and as the crowd chants along, the pire is lit - symbolizing a triumph of good over evil. As the fire burns the crowd celebrates by throwing the 25,000 bags of colored chalk (just flour in our case)that were distributed in the air, or at each other, creating a huge clowd of dust, and covering everyone completely in colors - hence the festival name.
 |
| From Holi Festival of Colors 2009 |
(click above to see video - the last 15 seconds of this is the main part. Of course I had to shut off my camera before too many colors started coming.)
And after that it turns into a hippie-fest chant-a-long dance.
And there's crowd-surfing and crazy people.
But in the end we had a great time.
Posts
1 comment:
Is this the same event as "India Fest?" Jon and I went to an event at that temple that I think was called that. I think we watched a play or skit or something there, but I definitely don't remember chalk. Or chanting. It sounds fun!
Post a Comment