Throwing color: Holi

All photos courtesy of Elena Korallis

There was something in the air on campus. Something green. Something white. Something yellow, red and pink. On March 12, the New College culture club celebrated Holi on the soccer fields behind Dortstein.

“Holi is a festival of colors,” Erin Lapeyrolerie, a second-year who helped organize the campus event, said. “It’s a Hindu and Sikh festival. Traditionally, everyone is supposed to wear white and then throw powdered color at each other.”

The festival is celebrated mainly in India and Nepal, though a few other countries with large Hindu populations also celebrate Holi. For many Indian states, it is a harvest festival held in the springtime. Holi also has several Hindu religious stories behind it.

About 50 students showed up to celebrate. They munched on veggie pakoras, which unlike those consumed in India on Holi, were not spiked with bhang, or the leaves of the cannabis plant. Panjabi music played while people stocked up on powdered colors and balloons filled with colored water. With everyone arranged in a loose group, someone counted to three, and the colorful chaos began.

Leave a Reply