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March 28, 2024

Hopkins celebrates Hindu festival of colors

By KELSEY KO | April 6, 2017

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Courtesy of naina rao The Beach came alive this Sunday, as Hopkins students celebrated the arrival of spring with Holi, the Hindu festival of colors.

Students celebrated Holi, the Hindu festival of colors that marks the arrival of spring, by throwing colored powder on the Beach on Sunday, April 2.

Junior Anwesha Dubey, one of the organizers of Holi and co-president of the Hindu Student Council, described her own experiences with the festival outside of Hopkins and why she appreciate what it represents.

“Holi is such a huge festival in India. I can’t speak for other Hindus, but I look forward to it every single year,” she wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “My entire neighbourhood community would come out to play Holi. It didn’t matter if yesterday you were family, neighbours, or strangers — during Holi, we were all together brothers and sisters, and anyone was fair game for a color attack.”

Sophomore Shravya Gogula, who had anticipated the festival, attended Holi for the first time this year.

“This was my first time attending a Holi event, and I was so excited to go given that I’ve seen it play out in so many Indian movies and had heard so much about it from family and friends,” Gogula wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “I loved being a part of the excitement and being a part of a crowd that wasn’t shy to go up to people they didn’t know and throw color all over them.”

Gogula enjoyed seeing her culture come alive on campus.

“Holi has a huge significance in the Hindu culture, and signifies a major change, and I can definitely say it was a great way to see the changes that the spring season brings to Hopkins,” she wrote.

Dubey described the logistics of planning the festival and how they made improvements to it this year so that students could have a better time.

“This year we tried a different technique of distributing the Holi colors, which I think really helped not only the efficiency in distributing, but also the amount of fun people had,” she wrote. “In previous years, we had long lines and really rationed the colors. This year, we got almost triple the amount of color, and I think having unlimited access to colors really helped the general ambiance of the event.”

Dubey explained that because students organize Holi annually, organizers have tried to outdo themselves each year.

“If ideas did not pan out the way we hoped at the event, we have a chance to redeem ourselves and troubleshoot,” she wrote. “Every year, Holi also gets bigger because we think of new ways to advertise or decide to add just another small element that makes a huge difference.”

Sophomore Ruchita Kothari also attended Holi for the first time this year and liked the fact that the event was diverse. She saw people who came from India, as well as American students of different races and backgrounds, coming together.

“I think a lot of the students were grad students that are from India, and to them it’s definitely a piece of home because it’s such a huge thing in India,” she said. “It was also really cool to see non-Indian people who just came with their friends. There were some people I knew that weren’t Indian, and they were having more fun than other people, since it’s very new to them.”

Kothari also noticed that even strangers  at the festival were open and friendly.

“I think what surprised me the most is that as soon as you go, people you don’t even know wish you happy Holi and throw colors at you,” she said. “It’s a very universal event. Even if you don’t know people at all, it’s still about coming together and having fun.”

Dubey echoed this sentiment, describing how she has seen students on campus interact differently and more openly with each other during Holi. Dubey feels these interactions spreads message of love, acceptance and celebration that Holi offers.

“In those moments I feel like I’m celebrating true Holi,” she wrote.

“Especially since Holi signifies so many different and beautiful concepts: the beginning of spring, the celebration of color, the triumph of good over evil, and, what I feel is the most important, equality of all people. Because by the end of Holi, there’s no black or white or brown, just rainbow.”


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