होली! The Festival of Colors

Yesterday was the much-awaited climax of Holi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holi. Jeff was in Uttar Pradesh, India for Holi last year, so he already experienced the craziness of the Festival of Colors:

Jeff in UP in 2010:

In case you didn't catch this from the photo or the nickname, basically the entire country (or at least the northern part) throws colors at everyone for at least a day, although I saw people going at it several days ago. "Colors" come dry as powdered dye or wet as liquid dye (often in really powerful waterguns sold by vendors for weeks leading up to Holi). And the newspapers printed guides for the best brands, the best colors (not green b/c it causes rashes), etc.

Of course, there's a lot more going on than just color-throwing. The streets were filled with bonfires on Saturday night, re-enacting the story of a miraculous escape by a devotee of Vishnu (see wikipedia). And to get everyone in the mood for revelry, a widespread accompaniment to color-throwing is consumption of bhaang (भांग), or marijuana, which is mixed into every kind of food and drink imaginable and consumed by all adult-ish members of the family together, in mostly small amounts.

Jeff and I played it safe and tagged along with our PA Shruti's family for their celebration of wet colors at Shruti's aunt's house. I wish I could have taken pictures of us in action, but alas, the risk to my camera was too great. And Jeff and I were offered only bhaang-free sweets.

VA Before:

With Shruti's Family:

With Shruti:

In the pristine office:

Outside our building:

Walking back from playing Holi with Shruti's family, it was hard not to notice that the only people on the streets besides us were packs of shirtless young men, covered in colors, howling and zooming around on their motorcycles.

It actually had a kind of Halloween-vibe - a temporary suspension of ordinary social norms, an openness to acting silly… maybe I was reading too much into it, but I had a great time - and now have blue hair! And Jeff has blue streaks all over his face! We'll be scrubbing colors off ourselves for weeks…