India:
How I celebrated Holi, the Indian Rite Of Spring
My father was a diplomat assigned to the embassy in New Delhi and we lived there for close to 5 years.
May God gift you all the colors of life, colors of joy, colors of happiness, colors of friendship, colors of love and all other colors you want to paint in your life. Happy Holi.
When spring time came as kids we longed for the warmer weather and the spring rite of the Hindu Festival Holi. Our preferred form of celebration was the color filled water balloon. It was one of those rare times our parents just couldn’t say “No”, due to the fact that everyone (literally) was doing it!
Doing what?
The celebration of Holi is a Festival of Color, like the new colors brought by spring flowers, there are colored powder packets and any kids favorite water balloons filled with water and the colored powered.
These are thrown at others in celebration. We always wore as much white as possible to show our badges of color. I remember changing into a clean white shirt just to be able to start the fun all over again!
As a student at the American Embassy School (AES) in Delhi, you can bet we were over enthusiastic about this celebration for many of us came from countries that had no festivals of this sort.
Besides for Easter & Christmas where toys and candy are involved, colored water balloons has to be any kids dream come true.
The Indian people were gracious towards us by spreading even more colored powder over us. We were walking, talking rainbows!
If you ever have the chance to visit the country of India, try to visit during the spring. It is a wonderful and awe-inspiring place to visit made even more a fun place to be during Holi.