Holi – The Festival of Spring

Hello friends, if we call India, the country of festivals, than it wouldn’t be very far from the truth. Spanning from North to South, East to West, we celebrate so many festivals that we just can’t finish it by counting on our fingers. These bevy of festival may be religious, national, social or local in nature, but people participate in it with great gusto. Holi, the festival of spring, love and colour also falls both in the category of socio religious. It’s celebrated to felicitate the spring season, as there is profusion of colourful flowers all around, we mark the occasion by smearing colour to deities and on each other.

Spring Flowers

A Celebration Of Colours

As for festival of love, Holi celebrates the eternal and divine love of Lord Krishna and Radha. On this full moon day of spring Sri Krishna played Holi ( Dol jatra in Bangla) with his lady love Radha and other Gopikas( village belles of Gokul) and danced with them in gaiety. Krishna had such a charisma that each of the Gopikas were convinced that his affection was only for her.

Holi is also the festival of delectable, homefood cuisines like malpuas, gujias, shakarparas, dahi vadas( ground mung and urad dal, fried and dunked in spiced bitten curd) and chholeys( cheak peas cooked in lot of spices). Friend and relatives visit each other’s houses, play with colour during the day and come back to taste the delicacies in evening.

When we were kids, there were absolute frenzy, frolic and ecxcitement surrounding the festival. The surfeit of colour, food and non stop fun overwhelmed us all the children so much that we slept like a log at the night. The next day at school we made fun of each other, because all our faces were still tinged with traces of colours which were hard to wash. We remained that way for the next few days to come!

Dahi Vadas

Maalpuas

Let the festival of colour make everyone’s life colourful and bright. There should be no sadness and pain and people learn to live and let live, peacefully.

Gujias

Chholeys

Wish you all a very Happy Holi.

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