The Indian Students Association hosted a celebration for Holi, the Festival of Colors, to commemorate the triumph of good over evil.
The colors of spring filled Baker Ballroom as students said goodbye to the cold, dark months of winter in a celebration of Holi.
The Indian Students Association hosted the Festival of Colors Sunday night. The festival, which symbolizes the triumph of good over evil, brought students, faculty and residents together.
The festival, named after the demon Holika, celebrates the legend of her death at the hands of the god Vishnu. The tradition of celebrating with a bonfire on the eve of Holi symbolizes her death by fire. On the next day, people come together to celebrate her death with the throwing of colors.
“Our lives are more colorful from now on. We have no demons,” Pragnya Kunchala, the vice president of Indian Students Association, said.
A color event will be held Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Participants will come together to throw colors at the Scripps Amphitheater. Tickets to throw colors are $2.
“In India, we will be spreading (colored) water on everyone we know and everyone we don’t know,” Kunchala, a graduate student studying mechanical engineering, said. “We will be running on road, splashing color on people, shouting ‘Happy Holi! Happy Holi!’ ”
The event Sunday alternated between educational sessions and performances throughout the evening. A speaker taught the audience the mythology, history and tradition of the festival, and performers displayed the music and dance of India.
Ajinkya Tikhe, a student and member of Indian Students Association, was the speaker. Tikhe challenged the audience to a game. He asked those chosen to try their hand at Indian pronunciation, teaching traditional names such as Pradyumna, Lakshay, Nishanth and Pranav.
A Holi banner from last year’s festivities was the backdrop for the performances. Colorful handprints of the participants covered the banner with rainbow gulal powder.
The event combined popular culture and religion, beginning with a prayer song as an offering to god and continuing with popular music from India’s Bollywood movie industry. Traditional dancing followed the singing. Children from the crowd also joined the performers to dance and play on the stage.
As a part of the Global Leadership Center, Maddy Plaster came to the event with a basic understanding of Indian culture.
“I think the easiest way to be a part of a culture and learn about it is to really just dive in and kind of experience the things they experience: the food and the music,” Plaster, a junior studying strategic communication, said.
The music interested her most.
“Getting to hear the way they create music and use it as a part of their culture and to express themselves is really interesting,” she said.
Children ran to the stage again with the promise of a game and prizes. When asked to sing any song of their choosing, only one was brave enough to participate. He sang his ABCs to an eruption of applause from the audience. When the children were offered their prizes, most ran off of the stage.
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Amul India, a restaurant in Columbus, catered traditional Indian cuisine. The dishes it served included mango lassi (a yogurt-based drink), a variety of curries, naan bread, gulab jamun and fried cakes served in sugar syrup.
Adobea Nii Owoo, a student from Ghana, said she learned a lot from the event.
“I want to get to know more about other people’s cultures so that I can understand people’s different perspectives,” Nii Owoo, a graduate student studying Spanish, said.
Through these events, she said people can get to know and appreciate new cultures.
The goal of the event was not to uphold only Indian culture, Kunchala said. It was to create interaction between all cultures present.
“Let us bring all the cultures together,” she said.
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