As winter takes a last nasty bite, it’s time to conjure up spring by painting the town…pink.<\/p>\n
The custom is so old that no one is sure how it all got started.\u00a0 But it wasn’t always fun and games.\u00a0 One popular tale is that long ago in India, there was a boy named Prahalad.\u00a0 He was a devotee of the god Vishnu.\u00a0 Prahalad’s father, an evil king, had grown exceedingly arrogant and jealous of Vishnu’s power.\u00a0 He ordered Prahalad to renounce Vishnu but Prahalad refused.\u00a0 Incensed, the king ordered his sister, a fire demon named Holika, to sit on a pyre holding Prahalad, so that he would be consumed.\u00a0 Miraculously, Vishnu’s power protected him, and Holika burned instead.\u00a0 To this day, Hindus celebrate this moment, when good was preserved and evil burned away.<\/p>\n
Some centuries later, Vishnu was manifested as Krishna, in the northern city of Dwarka.\u00a0 Krishna was a mischievous young prankster.\u00a0 One day, he thought it would be fun to drench the local girls with water and, to infuriate them, he added bright colors that would stain their clothing.\u00a0 They were none too pleased, so of course they retaliated.\u00a0 Krishna recruited all the young boys to join him.\u00a0 Adults got caught in the cross-fire.\u00a0 Soon the entire village, from the wealthiest nobles to the most downtrodden untouchables, joined the fray and launched the spray.\u00a0 The village was stained a joyous, raucous rainbow of pinks, yellows, purples and reds.\u00a0 In the end, everybody had such a good time, they resolved to do it again the following spring…<\/p>\n
And so, this weekend, India will explode in a massive, joyous, technicolor, communal water-balloon fight known as “Holi.”\u00a0 It’s the annual festival of spring.\u00a0 Holi celebrates the destruction of evil and the coming of colorful days ahead.\u00a0 On Saturday night, there will be bonfires of celebration.\u00a0 And then on Sunday, millions of Indians will dress in plain, absorbent white cotton – with no distinction of class, clan, or gender – and splatter a rainbow across the sub-continent.\u00a0 And not just in India.\u00a0 The party spills across the globe, to everywhere the Hindu diaspora has taken the faithful: Nepal, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa.\u00a0 Even to the United States, where there is a particularly large and notorious Holi celebration each year at Stanford University.\u00a0 (Yes, for one day the Cardinal will be rainbow-colored.)<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, here in the Northeast, there’s no sign of spring in sight.\u00a0 Another foot of snow is expected over the weekend.\u00a0 Everywhere you look, the world is coated white like cotton, white like…a white cotton shirt.\u00a0 Hmm. That does it!\u00a0 We’re grabbing the shovels and digging out.\u00a0 Heading down to the Stop ‘N Shop for water guns, balloons and RIT dye.\u00a0 And, impatient for spring, we’re conjuring up Vishnu.\u00a0 We’ve had enough, it’s time to tie-dye the yard.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Holi Ki Shubhkamnaye.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As winter takes a last nasty bite, it’s time to conjure up spring by painting the town…pink. The custom is so old that no one is sure how it all got started.\u00a0 But it wasn’t always fun and games.\u00a0 One popular tale is that long ago in India, there was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[572,580,585,613,704,978,1305],"class_list":["post-795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-5","tag-hindu","tag-holi","tag-holika","tag-india","tag-krishna","tag-prahalad","tag-vishnu"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}