Holi: One HUGE Water Gun Fight With Colors!

The week after Mukteshwar brought my dad’s seminars, a visit to IIT Delhi (the IITs are the premier technical institutes of India), and Holi on Thursday.  Also known as the Festival of Colors, Holi as a great holiday where everyone gets a day off of work/school to basically have one big water fight with water guns and colors.  Cool, right?

During a week before Holi, every market in Delhi was COVERED with plastic water guns and powders of all colors.  I found out that “water gun” in Hindi is “pitchkari” – what a fun word to say!  There is also a choice of the cheap powered colors that stain your skin and don’t come off for a week, or the slightly more expensive but safe for your skin herbal powdered colors that come off when you take a shower.  We went for the herbal ones (and let me tell you, the next day it was EASY to stop the people who chose the cheap colors!).

Biji giving my dad colors and blessings

We first started out by putting a little color on Biji and letting her put color on us.  Then we went to Monu and Yakshi’s home.  There, I really played some serious Holi with Kamya!  When Papa and I came over, Kamya was all ready, shirt tucked into her pants, pants pulled way up above her belly button, and a water gun in each hand!  Eventually we ganged up to get Papa all wet of course.

Kamya: the Queen of the water guns and high pants

After soon fun and good food, we headed to the home of Guddi bua, my second youngest aunt out of the 4.  We had fun playing Holi with her family, including Sunny bhaiya's daughter, Kuhu (she is the one who is almost 2 years old!). She's a cutie:

Kuhu...the little rascal

Sunny bhaiya and my dad (looks like Sunny bhaiya had some fun!)

A nap and a shower at Biji's house later, we headed to Kamala bua's home (she is my eldest aunt - 16 years older than my dad!).  Her son, Kittu, had his birthday on the same day, so they held a Havan for him.  A Havan is a ritual in which offerings are made to a fire.  We got to see all of the family on Kamala bua's side...Kittu bhaiya's wife, Chetna, had her whole family in town as well because her brother was getting married that weekend!  It was quite the big affair...probably over 30 people were there, and would you believe that was not even half of my extended family?  :) I spent the evening meeting everyone and being amazing how much all of my cousin's kids have grown.  Because my dad is the youngest of his siblings, I am actually more in the age group of my cousins's kids, not my cousins.  I always have fun with Isha, Prachi, and Yavish, the kids of one of my cousins. Isha is a year older than me studying law, Prachi is in her first year of college studying political science, and Yavish is in 10th and wants to study engineering. Hanging out with them reminded me of Neil and Leila :)  After some good food, dancing to Bollywood songs, we went home....ending our great Holi day.

Some of the kids at the Havan: Yavish, Me, Harshit, Bhavay, Kushi, and Isha