Its Holi! No one seemed to be entirely sure what day it actually was this week- either friday or saturday. Holi is a mad festival where loads of stuff happens but the main thing is throwing gulal (powder paint) and water at each other. The paint and water thing doesn’t really have a religious significance to people (around here anyway), its just about having fun and getting messy really.
So on thursday at the village school, after the kids had been itching with anticipation for a good hour or so, we all ran outside and slapped paint all over each other. It was awesome. Theres something very satisfying about throwing powder paint at people. True to most things Indian, they were the most lurid colours possible- fluorescent pink, purple, blue, green yellow, red and orange. Somehow the predominant colour I ended up being was pink. Not cool.
We got home that evening to find that our apartments had no water, so Anna and i had to sit in the apartment for the next few hours waiting for the water to come back and trying not to touch anything. Naomi and Becky arrived home after us looking remarkably clean- the city school had been far more reserved in their celebrations because half of the colony probably would have turned up with water, mud and colours otherwise!
There was nothing reserved about how our apartment block celebrated Holi though. On saturday we didn’t go out because unfortunately Holi also means a lot of drunk people, stoned people, groping strangers, and the occasional throwing of things other than water (cow poo, acid etc.), but we did have a massive water and colour fight with all the residents of our block. The taboos of man and woman, young and old were completely forgotten as everyone got smeared in every colour possible and completely soaking. I got hugged warmly by a lot of purple men. There should be something like this in the UK!
We all spent about an hour in the shower trying to scrub the bright pink off our faces, we all had slightly strange coloured patches of skin and streaks of hair at church this morning. Tour training at IMC should be fun… we have quite a few packs of paint powder left…..
David
