Happy Holi

Holi has following salient features:

1. Everybody looks quite the same, i.e., easily unrecognizable.

2. You can play with water, colors, mud etc. and others would be happy about it, unlike those toddler days.

3. You could deface/dirty anyone and that person won't really mind!

(bura naa maano, holi hai OR Don't mind, its Holi)

and many more...

For all my btech years, I happily avoided Holi celebrations in IIIT-H campus. But today when Ninja and Shashank came to take me for Holi celebrations, I couldn't really refuse. This would be my last year in college, my last holi as a college student so I decided to celebrate it for once. And it was fun. I now wonder how much fun it would have been if I had celebrated it with all my batchmates during the last four years. But, as they say, better late than never.

Shashank had asked me to prepare for the worst, i.e., wear an old t-shirt and that vest may not be worn. I changed into the t-shirt of the felicity my batch organized. And my dear juniors and friends tore my t-shirt, and then the vest I wore inside it. But it was fun getting one's t-shirt ripped and torn off. I felt more into the mood of Holi after that!

The mud party wasn't as bad as I had imagined. Nitin, Shashank, Abhinav and others put me in the puddle of mud water, then put mud and water on me, rolled me over the mud. With the mud party, I had officially celebrated my first Holi in IIIT-H!

I did avoid dipping into the tumbler of colorful dirty water, and used the hose pipe for direct water supply from a big water reservoir.

Just a passing thought: Holi and Halloween are similar in some ways... they sound similar, in Halloween people wear costumes and mask their face, in Holi people wear color on their clothes and mask their face with colors. Also, people are generally unrecognizable in both.

P.S. - Today before Holi celebrations, for the first time I solved some of many clues in crossword puzzle with Sashidhar.