Holi Festival

Title : Holi Festival
Date : 5’th March 2007
Holi Festival Date : 3’rd and 4’th March 2007.


Holi : The Festival of Colours, which marks the end of Evil....................where people forget all barriers (age, caste, sex, ) and play with colours.....

This time Holi festival was unfortunately on Saturday and Sunday...so the enthusiasm for us was less..............But we were expecting a lot to happen on Friday in our Office............

There was a special lunch which was arranged in our Office cafeteria on Friday, so we checked wwith our local office collegues, whether Holi celebrations will happen on Friday in Office (For us Holi celebrations, meant playing with colours (Gulal in Hindi).....
Our collegues answered that it will usually happen by Friday evening...so we had a discussion among ourselves (Me and my Bangalore collegue Arun), that we should wear and come some Old dress. We even had a discussion on whom we can target anf apply gulal..... We thought few names (Confidential) and thought of applying Gulal on them....and i said that we can apply Red Gulal on fw beautiful Gals over here (Just like Mang bharna), for which Arun gave a excellent reply......If someone applies Red Gulal (Just like Maaang bahrna), then in North INDIA according to their Tradition, the Girls consider them as their Brothers.......Arun seemed to be influenced by me and so he had also started speaking in my language :-) (But there is no such Tradition)..............

Even Holi is the only Festiaval where u get full freedom to touch the lovely cheeks of any of ur collegue / friend and apply Gulal :-)..forgetiing all the barriers......So we had a nice time over here..........

As decided we wore and came some old dress (T-shirt and Jeans pant) to the office on Friday...bur in the office all of our other collegues had come well dressed.....i just felt a bit bad, as i was wearinga T-shirt which i usaully wer as Night dress.....We were working and by 11:30 AM the Holi craze struck our office..There were groups of people entering our cubicles carring lots of Gulal and fully coated in colours.....Initially few of them did not bother to disturb me as i was new to that place...but in this short span i had made many friends and they did not spare me.....They just came around applied Gulal all over and carried on.....Even we got involved applying Gulal to each and every one.......There were few people (Mainly manger level) who stayed away from colours.As it was Appraisal time, most of the people did not dare apply gulal on them forcibly...But there was no such restriction on us, so i went to my Manager and applied a bit of gulal on him.........

Just within matter of few minutes, there was no one in their cubicles..every one was busy playing with Gulal........So a busy office location turned into a play ground within few minutes (i.e. the power of Holi..............)......
All our cubicles had become dirty, colours all around, on the floors, keyboard and every where.......The office boys had a difficult time cleaning the place...It's fun for some and Suffering (Hard work) for others...................It took a heavy tool on the office boys to clean up the place...........

Then we cleaned up ourselves and went for lunch.........the cafeteria was well decorated with more than 400 Ballons, Matkas (Pots filled with Gulal), some posters of Holi and even some Dance performances................

There was a variety of food items awaiting us...To name a few we had some Chats like:
GolGappe : Similar to Paani Poori
Allo tikki
Pappadi Chat
Gunjiya

and then normal food items (Pulav, roti etc).....

We took a Pulav item and a variety of each of the Chat items and enjoyes these food items watching the dance performances.....It was good to see all the people fully coated with colours...........There were more enthusiatic / charming faces and a few dull faces (May be who were forcibly coated with colours............)

By 4 PM, most of our office collegues had vacated, most of them going to their native places........So we just wished them HAppy Holi and continued our work....

We then left back to our Hotel rooms by 11 PM, hoping that more celebrations may happen on Saturday..........

Even on Saturday we cam eto the office in the same old dress, but unfortunately there were not much people in the office...we spent our tme doing some work, chatting with our friends, playing TT and then returned back home...............

On Sunday the actual Holi (Colour spraying ) is played...we were invited by one of our Bangalore office collegue (Sugandha) to her residence in Delhi. She said that they play Gandha holi on Sunday where all thei family members and relatives apply anything (gulal, grease, paint) and enjoy themselves........We did not want to disturb their celebrations as we will be strangers to their family, so we informed that we may not join her........

We woke up by 10:30 in our Hote on Sunday. By then the Trainees who had come from Chennai, bangalore had started making lots of humgama, applying Holi and dancing around....Luckily most of them did not knew about us, so we were spared......we had our Breakfast.......Then the Hotel staff and the Manager gave us a call, asking whether we would like to have Bhang...........Let me give u ppl an introduction of Bhang................

Bhang : Bhang is a type of leaves, similar to Pudhina etc which people mix it in milk and consume it on the ocassion of Holi. Even they prepare Bhajji from Bhang and consume it.....If consumed on larger scale, Bhang makes people loose their consiousness and they tend to do the same task (As told by people, if consumed on large volume, it induces drowsiness, people who laugh keep laughing, who cry keep crying and so on....i.e they loose thier mind consiousness).........So i am using the term "Bhanged"................

It is a common drink in these parts of the world.They say that in every house Bhang is prepared and all the members of the family , including ladies consume Bhang (Exception being small children)


We thanked them and siad that we would not like to have it............By 12:30 PM, we saw few of Trainees staying in the Hotel playing cricket in the small park located in front of the Hotel...even we joined them and played till 4 PM....As we were seniors in Aricent, they did not apply gulal and were treated with more respect............By then the Holi colours had calmed down........we then made an evening walk towards some og th Shopping malls, returned to our Hotel heard few of my all time favourite songs (Anisutte yaako indu, Pal pal dil ke paas, Chalte chalte, Pyar maanga hai tum hi se...............) and then had a sound sleep.........


Today we are seeing most of our collegues still stained in Holi colours, with thir hands still having traces of Holi colours...................


More Details about Holi Festival.............

Holi is celebrated for 3 days over here.On first day (i.e. Saturday), people perform some pooja and burn the putlas of Holika and mark the end of Evil..
On second day, people play with the colours. Usually the word used here is "Gandha Holi", which implies that there is no restriction on what can be sprayed. People go to the extent of evn pouring paint, drainage water , grease etc, hence termed "Gandha" (Dirty) Holi.

Third day (i.e. Monday), it is termed Basada, where People go to the temple and consume previous days food, after keeping it in moonlight.

Hope that i am not Boring u guys by all these junk blogs which i am writing.............


This Official visit is helping me gain some Technical knowledge, make new friends, know North Indian culture , visit the Historical places around and probably making me a Writer :-)......................