Not every day can be a "Holi" day

Oh "Holi" Night indeed! 
What is she meaning?, you ponder with a confused look on your face.
You probably look confused because you didn't come to the awesomeness on UT campus Saturday.
Or maybe you saw it and thought to yourself, "You crazy kids with paint on their faces!"
Or maybe you were there! (kudos if you were because you might understand my sentiments)

According to India Express, Holi is celebrated "on the day after the full moon in early March. Originally a festival to celebrate good harvests and fertility of the land, Holi is now a symbolic commemoration of a legend from Hindu Mythology...Today, Holi is an excuse for Indians [or all people who want to be included] to shed inhibitions and...differences for a day of spring fever and big fun."

This small summary really explained the reasons why people celebrate it but let me explain what happened. We all got these little bags of powdered color, and we throw, smear, pour, toss it on all our friends and people near us. I'll never forget what one of the students from Hindu Student Association said before we started: this celebration is for us to come together as one community, and in the end, we all look the same and our differences don't matter anymore.

BINGO! I GOT IT! I found out how to cure all injustices and inequalities! I'm going to walk around with a little bag of colored powder and anytime I see something that's unequal, I'm going to throw powder on it! That way everything is just a mess all the time.

Whoa whoa whoa... Was that right? Will everything just look the same? Will we never be able to celebrate our differences? Will all the colors and identities just run together in one mass of brown? Isn't that what makes this country so important...? Sometimes it makes this country so deadly. People are attacked for being innovative or different. People are attacked for also not standing up for themselves or sticking up for others.

Is it more important to celebrate our differences or just appreciate our human sameness? As it's difficult for me to think in extremes, we always need to have a happy medium for things, including differences/similarities. Maybe that's why we have days like Holi, so we can just forget that we are different for just one day but then all other days celebrate our differences. We aren't talking about our issues but that's ok! We don't always need to talk; sometimes we just need to laugh, forget there are problems for a couple of hours, and love our fellow human.


Holi: The Festival of Colours