{"id":954,"date":"2010-03-05T13:24:51","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T13:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/freshliving\/2010\/03\/visions-of-holi.html"},"modified":"2010-03-05T13:24:51","modified_gmt":"2010-03-05T13:24:51","slug":"visions-of-holi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2010\/03\/visions-of-holi.html","title":{"rendered":"Visions of Holi"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Holi_Festival<\/span>Trudi Levine, a New Yorker, has been in India for 5 months, volunteering at a women’s organization in Lucknow. She recently traveled to the epicenter of Holi, the gorgeous Hindu spring festival of colors, celebrated on March 1. Here are her impressions…<\/i><\/p>\n

If you are someone who enters Fairway or Zabar’s on Christmas or New Year’s Eve day and gets piqued…stay away from Holi. <\/p>\n

If you have any personal boundaries….stay home.<\/p>\n

If you have a need for control (such as getting to a destination) ….don’t go out for three days before HOLI. <\/p>\n

Colours are tossed, dumped, thrown, rubbed, hurled, scattered, shot, bucketed, on ….faces, hands, hair, arms, breasts, inside shirts…front and back, legs, mouth  (ears covered with cotton), eyes…in short…EVERYWHERE. It was NEVER about being anywhere, but rather in the trying to get there.<\/p>\n

We had been planning on going to Varanasi and were informed (after having discussed this for three weeks) that it was a really bad idea as celebrants are wont to rip off clothes and do whatever with no constraint. A groundswell of opinion with firm admonitions and faces stern and forbidding became compelling.  Go to Mathura, birthplace of the Krishna, and Vrindaban, where he grew up. This is the epicenter of Holi.<\/p>\n

Drive passes in a flash and we find our hotel, eventually, which is at a crossroad between Matura,  Vrindiban and Govindam and right across a huge temple complex around which are milling, moving, mixing hordes of people. <\/p>\n

Check in and take off, first to this temple complex into which we are invited and welcomed to a balcony overlooking the seated be-coloured women and children and more subdued men, all awaiting their 109- year-old guru.  As far as the eye can see, and as we climb the tower and our eyes take in more, there are even more souls awaiting…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n We head for Matura, following the sign for the city (silly thing to do
\nas it takes us 40 minutes when the direct route out of our hotel is
\n2K.Hotel is unhelpful in that they seem totally ill equipped to deal
\nwith the needs of tourists.  Makes sense I guess….they are, after
\nall, a hotel!<\/p>\n

Back to the car to make it to Vishram Ghat for
\nAARTI (this is when we still thought we had some control at the
\nmargins). Not only are we sent to the other side of the Yamuna River,
\nbut we have the distinct impression that a) our driver is getting a
\nreally hard time because he is Muslim and b) the goal of the ‘helpers’ 
\nis not to get us where we want to go, but rather to get us into the
\nclutches of some ‘guide’.  We do get to the GHAT just as AARTI ends. 
\nBut, for a fee, the priest comes and  blesses, chants, intones and gets
\nformed words to emanate from my mouth comprised of sounds I didn’t know
\nI could make.<\/p>\n

 Our driver is a sweetheart. He makes herculean
\nefforts to get directions wherever we are going (and in India that is
\nmonumental).  The fact that we get ‘there’ either late or ‘not at all’
\nis really never the point.  The more we ‘try’ the funnier he finds
\nus…topped only by our bodies being covered in colour, sliding into
\nhis plastic covered car.<\/p>\n

 We call it a night…have dinner, with
\nplans for 5:30 am for Govindam to visit the mountain which Krshna
\nlifted and to visit the temple. <\/p>\n

 At some point, no more
\nmovement in the traffic….buses with more people than any axle should
\never need contemplate, cars, vans, all emptying their contents of human
\nflesh onto the street and the bodies can make their way through the
\nabandoned vehicles to …..to…..to….well we may as well
\nfollow….and we do.  <\/p>\n

Perhaps the mountain is there, and it
\ncould be that at the fork in the road (where no one could tell us a
\nthing) it was the path not taken, instead we head through a narrow road
\nfollowing the mass (of men) and facing the retreating mass (of men). 
\nThis is our first HOLI experience and it is much less pleasant than
\nwill be the following day (in my estimation).  More powder thrown into
\nfaces and Molly gets it in her eyes.  The tears help to clean it out
\nand my bandana becomes the ‘handiwipe’ of choice.<\/p>\n

We arrive at
\nthe temple, which is surrounded by water in which people are stripping
\nand bathing and as I  look at the water, I assume, to get dirtier. The
\ntemple itself, as one moves closer to the inner sanctum, throbs with
\nthe passions, ecstasies and laughing\/crying hysterias of men hurling
\nwater, milk, flowers, themselves. We stay on the rim.  Molly has had
\none too many men grabbing her breasts and we head out. <\/p>\n

I have
\nmy walking stick and I suggested I walk behind her with my ‘pole’…it
\nworked! No one touched her….(“though she be but little, she is
\nfierce!”)<\/p>\n

 We rest for an hour and a half and then head back to Mathura, hoping to return to the fabulous street and the Vishram Ghat…. <\/p>\n

We
\ndid get a half a block from HOLI Gate (yes, the Times Square of HOLI)
\nafter having tasted some great candies and stopping at a jewelry store
\nwhere Molly’s horoscope coincidentally came out with her needing a
\nyellow sapphire (the very same one in front of her) to balance out her
\nsun in Jupiter.  We were sooooo surprised!  Was beautiful and I had
\nfantasies myself, but too much right now for a spontaneous purchase.<\/p>\n

Warned
\nthat if we went any further we would be inundated [by coloured
\npowders], we didn’t want to leave…we didn’t want to stay. Dan looks
\nup and sees ‘the press’ on the second floor of the corner building we
\nwave, gesticulate and allow our bodies to plead for
\nrefuge….SURE….They send someone down to get us and we have the
\nvantage point for the parade which follows. <\/p>\n

We choose to not
\ngo out at midnight for the bonfires as it’s clear (as there were no
\nwomen on the street for the parade) that it would have been unwise. <\/p>\n

 However,
\nthis does not stop us from heading out to Vrindban on Holi morning. We
\nget out of the car and traverse what we later realize is maybe 100
\nyards and we are pretty covered.  By in large it is men plastering
\npasted powder on our faces (breasts become part of the face-pasting
\nexperience) and some over the head….almost none thrown as the day
\nbefore in the face. Down our backs and our fronts (my stomach still
\ngreen and red and undergarments kaleidoscopic) and hair which becomes
\nlike steel wool. <\/p>\n

 After this onslaught we see a vision ….a
\nwhite, pristine temple and we seek refuge.  Hari Krshna…and
\neverything is context. There is none of the feeling\/reaction of airport
\nHari Krshnas;  instead there are beautiful men dancing, alone, with
\neach other, with their god, to chanting, kirtan, which, along the
\nbeauty of the temple, ferret out every dark cobwebbed corner of psyche
\nand soul and  ‘just rocks.’  As young women are not out Holi morning,
\nolder women get up to dance and this becomes the first place I’ve seen
\nin India where older couples were actually touching each other!<\/p>\n

Assured
\nthat there were no powders in the Temple, we sit in the courtyard
\nwatching families and individuals leave at the closing time in the
\ntemple, and man after man comes and covers us once again.  We are ready
\nto go, but our shoes are now locked in a cupboard which can be opened
\nonly in three hours. I figure, either they will find a key…or
\nnot…so I ask for a nice place to sit and chai. They do eventually
\nfind one and we return for a nap.<\/p>\n

We return to Vrindaban and
\nthere is no more colour, at least not flying through the air. But
\ncolour!!!! Everyone is out on the street and women, who have been home
\nall day, reclaim public space and there is colour galore.  <\/p>\n

We
\nthen go to Bankey Bihari Temple, which is considered to be one of the
\nholiest of the Krshna Temples, with the God not having been created by
\nhuman hands, but rather by the god himself.<\/p>\n

 “Also he wanted his
\nbeloved lord to be in front of his eyes always. Granting him his both
\nwishes, the couple turned itself into one single black charming idol,
\nthe same one that you see in the temple today. The charm and beauty of
\nShri Banke Bihariji is the only reason why the ‘darshan’ in the temple
\nis never continuous but is broken by the curtain drawn on him
\nregularly. It is also said that if one stares long enough into the eyes
\nof Shri Banke Bihariji, the person would lose his self consciousness.”<\/p>\n

There
\nwas the experience of seeing the ‘god’, but the better experience was
\nfacing out to the crowd as the curtain rose and they were transported. 
\nOld,  very old and ancient souls lit up, younger men prostrated
\nthemselves, but what was clear for all was there was nothing between
\nthem and their god. <\/p>\n

We return home to Lucknow, tired, hot,
\nstiff. I go to the park and it is full of families, children, couples,
\nas the holiday still lingers as a sweet taste.  I walk a few blocks and
\ntry a new street food which resembles a bean burrito…..yum.  The
\nnight is hot…the day sizzles in the 90’s and it is now officially
\nspring. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trudi Levine, a New Yorker, has been in India for 5 months, volunteering at a women’s organization in Lucknow. She recently traveled to the epicenter of Holi, the gorgeous Hindu spring festival of colors, celebrated on March 1. Here are her impressions… If you are someone who enters Fairway or Zabar’s on Christmas or New…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-blogger","category-holistic-living"],"yoast_head":"\nVisions of Holi - Fresh Living<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/freshliving\/2010\/03\/visions-of-holi.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Visions of Holi - Fresh Living\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Trudi Levine, a New Yorker, has been in India for 5 months, volunteering at a women’s organization in Lucknow. 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