For The Someday Book

ritesh2103.wordpress.com

I just learned about the traditional celebration of Holi in India. Where has this festival been my whole life?

I have a lifelong obsession with colors. I can’t describe it, except to say that I feel a spiritual and almost physical connection to the colors of the world. I crave color, need it, inhale its presence like the air I breathe and feel its absence as suffocation. More and brighter is always better. My desk is covered with colored folders, I only write in brightly-colored ink, I drape my body in colored scarves, I decorate my house in the brightest and most vibrant tones I can find.

And now I have learned that in India there is a festival dedicated to the celebration of color.

http://www.interiordesign.net

Holi arrives as winter is holding on to its last gasp and spring is breaking through, at the end of February and beginning of March. This year it falls on Monday, March 1. It is a celebration of life, of love, of the triumph of good over evil. (Unfortunately, there is a story of the burning of a disloyal woman in its mythological background, which does taint it. Why must religion always build holiness on the broken bodies and believed betrayals of women?)

manjaridasi.wordpress.com/2008/01/16/55/

The people celebrate by buying or making large quantities of

powdered or liquid paints, and running through the streets throwing colors all over one another. Everyone, regardless of race, caste, class, sex, age or wealth participates in the melee. At the end of the celebration, every body and building is smeared with hues of purple, red, orange, green and blue, and the signs of class and race are covered over in bright colors.

http://www.jitens.com

Just looking at the pictures is a feast for the eyes. My vision of heaven would look a lot like that amazing mess of colors. I want to go there some day, to celebrate an orgy of color in the streets.