Holi cow!

when you come to india there is invariable going to be a festival going on somewhere in the city you're visiting. shirley and i seemed to just miss a bunch of festivals on our trips away from hyderabad, but we recently got to partake in one of the most fun and definitely most colorful indian holidays, holi. i won't go into the entire background of the holiday, but it's basically a celebration of the arrival of spring. the event consists of very colorful dye and water. when you see pictures from india, you often see bowls of powder that are totally saturated red, or blue, or yellow. this is the holi dye. there is also a bonfire the night before to pray respect to Holika, but we didn't attend one of these.

for holi, people come up to you and rub the dye all over your body and wish you "happy holi." they will also spray you with water guns, hoses, or just dunk you in water. i figured it would be something for the kids mostly, but every adult we came across had paint on their face and was eager to slather us up. when we woke up, shirley went outside to see what it was like and as soon as she was spotted she got dyed. it's definitely a holiday that keeps true to indian form. it's energetic, colorful, loud, and social. this kind of holiday wouldn't last a day in the states b/w the 'sensitive' types and the lawyers. but here in india everyone just gives into the celebration and has a great time.

we stayed on campus for the festival. at first we thought we might be missing something by not being out on the town, but it turned out to be the best thing b/c we were all wet by the end and it would have been a nightmare to catch a rickshaw in our condition. there were actually two celebrations here on campus. the official holi was on wednesday, which we attended, but since that was a school day and the administration didn't want to condone skipping class they had their 'official' holi party on saturday. we couldn't attend that one b/c we were in kerala by then. well that's enough writing, this is a case where a picture says a thousand words.

left to right: goeri (pronounced yuri), walter, don't know, bram, shirley, me (seated).

my face actually looks very tame here. i must have gotten a lot of it washed off.
here's a good vid of vinh and i getting holi'd

a wider shot of everything. i feel sorry for the housekeepers, they had to clean all this up.