Controlling Holi

Elephant paint

Last week, the end of classes was upon us.  After taking several exams and turning in papers, we had a very long holiday from Wednesday to Sunday.  I didn’t actually go anywhere, but celebrated the festival of colors, or Holi.  On Wednesday, the night before Holi, Jaipur has “elephant Holi,” where they dress up and parade what seemed like hundreds of elephants around the polo grounds.  It was an even strictly for tourists – I was in shock as to how many white people were there.  After watching the parade go by, there were several performances.  We had the opportunity to pet elephants and see their beauty up close, which of course ended in sexual harassment from several young, cocky Indians.  Because we were no longer to stay in the crowd, we watched the rest of the festivities from afar.  At the end of the night, they lit off fireworks and lanterns and a few lucky tourists got to play Holi on the elephants (playing essentially means throwing colored powder at other people and becoming covered with colors in the process).  On my walk home, I saw the stacks of wood set up to be lit at 4:30 a.m., the auspicious time of Holi this year.  When these fires were lit, my roommate tried to rouse me from my slumber, with little success to see the forty foot high bonfire lit right outside of our window. 

Lantern in the sky

In the morning, Bridget and I were excited to start playing.  As our family has never celebrated Holi, we were going to meet our friends around 11. Quickly we were ready in our white shirts, anxious to celebrate this holiday.  One thing led to another, and we didn’t actually get the chance to try and leave until around one.  As soon as we walked out of the gate, and started down the road, we were called back in by our host mom.  I had a bad feeling.  Apparently, her brother had convinced her that there were too many drunk men out for us to be safe (we later learned that there was actually nearly no one on the streets, as this is a holiday spent with family usually).  We were stuck at home for another two hours.  Fifteen minutes after this, our host mom came into our room and asked if we wanted to join the family at an aunt’s house to celebrate Holi.  I was pretty sure that this was going to be our only chance to celebrate, so I agreed.  We were off. 

When we got there, there were only a few other people, who had already played quite a bit.  Luckily, they were happy to see clean faces, and quickly colored ours.  It was so funny to see our host mom running from her siblings, trying to keep as much color as possible off of her clothes.  Bridget, Paige and I had a good time with our siblings and the other family we met.  We were certainly covered in color by the time we left.  After some sweets and a bit of chatting on their swinging bench, we were ushered back into the car, and driven home.  We all bathed the purple suds off our bodies, and slept well, full of Holi treats.  It was not exactly the way that I wanted to celebrate, and I am still a bit jealous of the girls who did get to go out, but it was still fun. 

Me, Paige and Bridget after being coated with color

The next day, we got to celebrate another student’s birthday.  Alex turned twenty one, and as a result, we were all surprised with cake and ice cream from the staff.  That night, we went over to a friend’s house, made far too many no-bakes, and danced on their roof at night.  It was fun, but Bridget and I had to be home by ten.  By this point in time, I was very sick of the lack of control I had in my life.  I was told what to eat, where to go, what to buy, how much to use, and how and when I could do all of these things.  Being a girl in India really sucks sometimes.  I was definitely looking forward to leaving and getting the chance to see a new part of Rajasthan.   Monday too far too long to come – when we finally arrived at the NGO, I was ready to start doing things my way (at least a little bit).