Sahildeep Singh Raina
Holi, the great Indian festival of colors, is a unique celebration of high spirits, when the new season is courted with a riot of rich colors. It is like a grand kaleidoscope that glorifies all the hues that tinge and renew the lives on earth.
It falls on the full moon day of the March, the month when the nippy north wind bows out to the refreshing and rejuvenating breeze from the south, heralding the onset of the ensuing summer in this part of the world. It is thus a festival of spring. The time when the seasonal cycle is caught on a transition. This is when nature starts donning new color. The new foliages start sprouting on the branches, dried and weary over a winter. It is also time when the harvests are reaped and bundled in sheaves. The air is filled with promises of warmth and new lives as the earth discards the wintry glum to greet the bright sun of summer. Beset with this exhilarating backdrop, Holi comes, flinging colors and verve into the landscape of India. As if to mark the renewal and rebirth of life. Holi is thus a celebration of life, the life of love, unblemished joy, and good spirits.
The celebration of Holi has different aspects. It is a celebration of the triumph of good over evil, a carnival of colors, a community festival, and a tradition of ancient spring rites,
The evening of bonfires:
The day before the full moon day of the Holi is called as the Small Holi. Children lit up bonfires and sing and dance around it. The evil spirit, symbolized by all those dead leaves, twigs, dirt and filth that collects during the winter months, is thrown up in the fire. Quite a spring cleaning indeed!
People sometimes take embers from the fire to their homes to rekindle their own domestic fires. In some community, a pot of new barley seeds is placed for roasting under the pyre before the bonfire is lit up. These seeds are eaten after the fire dies down. The yields in the coming harvest season are predicted by reading the direction of the flames or by the state of the roasted seeds in the pot.
It is said the ashes from the Holi fire also provide protection against diseases.
The carnival of colors:
The main event of Holi is indeed a carnival of colors. On this day, children, friends and neighbors come out on the streets. And the spree to color-anyone-you-see takes over. Colors of all form and variety. They come in shades of red, orange, blue, green, and purple, and the likes. And they are available in oil, water or powder base.
Colored powder, or, gulal was earlier made out of dried seeds of some tropical flowers like the Palash, and dried silt from the riverbed. This has now given way to synthetic dyes, available in the form of pigments. For a glittering effect, fine dust of Mica are also mixed with the powdered dye. People throw these colored powders in the air as they shout “Holi Hai!”, and smear each other with this colored powder.
Also they wet each other with colored water from Pitchkaris. Colored water is prepared by mixing the pigments of synthetic dyes. These dyes are available in a range of shades. These are sold by most of the local grocers and special purpose kiosks which crop up only for those Holi days. These outlets also sell other Holi accessories, like Pitchkaris, balloons, and head gears, along with coloring pigments. Also water-filled baloons are used these days to charge the target with a splash of color. Indeed the effect is blasting enough to be taken aback. So don’t get shocked if you go out in the streets, on this day, and suddenly, balloon darts at you, leaving you wet and colored!
Community festival
It is a community festival that bridges the social gap. People color each other with gulal and other form of dyes. Young men throw colored powder and colored water on women.
Thus, Holi helps in celebrating the mood of nature with a range of colors.The spirit of celebration is to showcase the shifting panorama of life, of sights, movement of feelings.
The human hearts also feel the urge to be recharged with new colors to catch on the mood outside. And Holi gives us a wonderful chance to do this. For, it reminds us that the time is perfect to be colored, to renew love and recharge your vitality. And the color symbolizes the energy, the vivid, passionate pulse of life signifying vitality.
Raas Leela of Sri Krishna
Sunil Raina
Holi is the festival which is celebrated with fun, frolic and festivity. The air is filled with 
freshness and there is warmth all around after a spell of dull winters. The spring brings its brilliance as the flowers start to blossom in all their fullness. The youthful exuberance is everywhere whether in nature or among humans and it is the perfect time to revel this newness all around. It is this time of the year when Indic Civilization since ages has been celebrating the festival of colours.
The central motif of Holi is the playfulness or Raas Leela of Sri Krishna and that of the milkmaids known as Gopis of Vrindavan. This important celebration of unconditional love and complete submission is an important station in spiritual evolution which is exhibited by Raas leela and is unparalleled anywhere in the world. Radha and the milkmaids who are married exhibit divine love, veneration and oneness towards Krishna. Gopis come to Sri Krishna leaving everything and everyone just as a Vairagi who has renounced all. Gopis perceive the divine qualities such as perfection, fullness, infinite love in Krishna that they take sincere step towards approaching Krishna without realizing the consequences or the backlash it might lead in their social lives. The love of Gopis towards Krishna becomes the very reason of salvation as it involves complete surrender of all the worldly values or that of life itself which one endears.
The Raas Leela has an esoteric meaning as the allegories of Radha and Krishna reveal the search of identity of one in other. The lover in every sense may be earnest or worthless but the eye of the love perceives divine perfection and completeness in other. There are no traces of pride and ego and it appears as if one is in search of other since ages. This stage is akin to the state which is experienced by everyone be it in search of worldly love or Divinity.
All this allegory is a reflection of reality in the mirror of our illusion. This reality of being and becoming is our inner life where Krishna is the Lord, the Gopis are the souls of men and Vrindavan is the field of consciousness where this Leela gets enacted. It can also be said that Gopis represent our indriyas which are our desires, wishes, wants, Vrindavan is the physical body and Krishna is the soul.
It is in this backdrop that Krishna sends a message to all the humanity to be a sincere participant of this leela and at the same time emphasizing that surrendering to Him will lead to liberation which in itself is completeness and which is prerequisite for final deliverance.
However, there are other legends and stories associated with this celebration which emphasize the victory of good over evil as in the case of Prahalad who was tried to be burnt on pyre by his aunt Holika and who herself got burnt in return and since then burning of pyre is an important ritual of the festivity.
One more legend is associated with Lord Shiva who was tested by Cupid in order to see the resolve of Lord Shiva’s meditation. Hence Kamdev came before Lord in the form of a nymph. On recognizing Lord of Love disguised as nymph Lord Shiva turned angry and opened His third eye reducing him to ashes. Hence bon fire also represents burning of Kamadev.
The other dimension is the celebration of Holi by Sri Krishna during Dwapur yuga with play of colours, squirting of water, songs, music, dance and joy in all its richness. Krishna made it a community event so that all can celebrate it without any adherence to strict caste or gender inequality. This is the Leela of Krishna – the great seducer making everyone his own. Thus, the spirit of Holi signifies that worldly affair is the Divine play where true spiritual seeker has to understand the diversity, stay on course in the spiritual trajectory and focus on the Oneness of Divinity.
However, with all these events and spiritual significance the Holi has become truly a festival of colours where every participant let loose themselves in the fun associated with it and make a great memorable experience in itself.
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