My holi celebration started in the office with a Collage Competition. The theme was 'Holi is in air'. During the collage competiton we did a lot of googling. During googling there were loads of interesting facts which attracted me. Our collage started with the bonfire which is done a day before holi known as Holika Dahan. In Hindu Mythology it is a believe that the fire is a vitory of good over evil. Let me share a little background with this regard. There was a King Hiranyakashyap who was blessed from god that he can not die during day or night; inside the home or outside, not on earth or on sky; neither by a man nor an animal; neither by astra nor by Shastara. So he made people worship him like a God. But his son never worshipped him and a big devotee of Lord Vishnu. With this Hiranyakashyap got angry because his own son didn’t worship him. He tried a lot of things to kill him. Hiranyakashyap’s sister, Holika, had a shawl which protected her against fire. Hiranyakashyap asked her sister to take Prhalad with her in fire. Prhalad kept praying to Lord Vishnu and the shawl flew from her body and covered Prahlad. This way Holika died and Prahlad’s was unharmed.
Next I came across a picture of a Muslim and Hindu man each selling colors for Holi. This fascinated me and I thought while purchasing colors we forget the people who are giving us the colors. In the excitement of the festival we buy colors from the person who is selling the color without asking him the God he prays. For so many years people have been fighting in the name of Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, and many other religions. I hope this year this evil has been burnt with the Holika.
After the bonfire I got pictures of the actual celebration of Holi. Holi is a festival celebrated across people irrespective of gender or age. Be it kids, teenagers, a mother or an old man the celebration of Holi brings smile to all of them. As is said about holi people forget all the bad things and become friends. This is a good thing about Holi of bringing people together from different regions, ages and genders. Last thing is the food items or pakwans which people enjoy during holi. Food ranging from pua, poori, dahi vada with imli chutni, chicken. Well these are common food items at Bihar, Jharkhand and UP.
This was an overall thing depicted in our collage. One team spoke about the significance of colors. The 7 seven colors which are there in a rainbow. Red is a strong color that conjures up a range of seemingly conflicting emotions from passionate love to violence and warfare. Orange denotes energy, warmth, and the sun. Yellow is a warm color that, like red, has conflicting symbolism. On the one hand it denotes happiness and joy but on the other hand yellow is the color of cowardice and deceit. Green signifies growth, renewal, health, and environment. On the flip side, green is jealousy or envy (green-eyed monster) and inexperience. Blue is calming. It can be strong and steadfast or light and friendly. Indigo turns the blue inward, to increase personal thought, profound insights, and instant understandings. While blue can be fast, Indigo is almost instantaneous. Violet is a mysterious color, associated with both nobility and spirituality. When we mix all these colors we get the color white. White signifies purity, cleanliness, and innocence.
Almost all the teams spoke about the ill-effects of terrorism and hoped that with this holi the evil is burnt. One team had fun by putting colorful palm prints on their collage. The team which won had made collage on 2 sides of the chart paper. On one side they had shown how everyone is enjoying holi. While on the other side they showed the dark fact that still there are loads of people in India who cant play holi. Those small, poor kids who don’t have parents or anyone to make their life colorful. At the end when they said that lets bring color to their life touched all of us who were present there.
Holi is a celebration where Lord Vishnu came in the form of a Narasimha (who is half-man and half-lion) and killed Hiranyakashipu at dusk (which was neither day nor night), on the steps of the porch of his house (which was neither inside the house nor outside) by restraining him on his lap (which is neither in the sky nor on the earth) and mauling him with his claws (which are neither astra nor shastra). There is a wet Holi in morning when people throw colored water over others and then in the evening dry holi is celebrated with abeer or gulal which is a dry colored powder.
At Mathura there is lathmaar holi where ladies hit their husband with a lathi. Vrindavan is a famous place for holi. Lathmaar holi is again is a tradition. Now I found out in google that Lathmar Holi is closely associated with Lord Krishna and Radha. It is said that Krishna, who is dark in color, was jealous of the fair-colored Radha. Krishna used to pester Mother Yasodha with questions on Radha’s skin color. Once fed up, she said to Krishna that he can change her skin tone by sprinkling color. Krishna and friends used this opportunity to create pranks on Radha and friends. The men reach Barsana and throw colors on women and the women fight back with batons.
These day many harmful colors have come up in the market so we should avoid these colors. We should play with safe colors and if possible make some colors at home. We should also avoid applying color forcibly. The saying ‘Bura na mano holi hai’ is fine but still playing holi forcibly is bad.
So how was your holi celebration? Also what do you think about holi?
