Sunday
Mar312013
Happy Holi-Days
03.31.2013 
What a delight today was.
How often do you get to find a new way to celebrate a seasonal holiday? Literally, in this case, a Holi day, which celebration coincided this year in Paris with the Christian Easter.
How often do you get to find a new way to celebrate a seasonal holiday? Literally, in this case, a Holi day, which celebration coincided this year in Paris with the Christian Easter.
Thanks to Nona and Popeye, two Indian photographer friends, we were invited over to the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, a private park that contains dozens of residence halls for students from all over the world, specifically to the dorm building called Maison de l'Inde.
The occasion? The annual celebration of Holi, a Hindu holiday also known as the Festival of Color, celebrating the arrival of colorful spring, after the monochromatic months of winter. It also commemorates various events in Hindu mythology, but mostly it's an excuse to forget barriers of caste and class, and to get down and funky. Celebrants throw fluorescent colored powders, like turmeric, and drench each other with colored water. One's eventual resemblance to an Easter egg is purely coincidental.
In this case, the revelry and silliness the hundred or so participants engaged in was accompanied by ear-splitting Indian rock music, and the kind of freeform sybaritic dancing that recalled the best days of the old Fillmore Auditorium.
If the multinational Paris celebration also looks suspiciously like college spring break, we won't deny it. The colored powders came out at eleven a.m., and the cases of beer came out about eleven-oh-five. We left about three to come home and process photographs and write this post, but the party was just getting started. If you have a Hindu community near you, be sure and make a friend before next year's Festival of Color. And wear old clothes.
We hope you'll excuse us now, we have to go shower--and have the cameras cleaned.
Reader Comments (16)
Thanks for covering this event. I loved the way you wrote the event started at eleven and beers came out at eleven-oh-five. :)
You're welcome, Nona. Thanks for inviting us.
And would we lie?
R and K
Loved this! Would love to be there some year.
Thanks for capturing and sending to California for us to enjoy!
I think the beer came out earlier!! What a fun event and beautiful photos.
Thank-you! This was an Easter basket gift full of delights delicious as the homemade coconut mochi I bought at the Makuu farmer's market today. It was as if they put on the show to complement Richard's talent.
Julie,
Thank you! We hope you'll be here, too, to be changed--in a matter of minutes--into a rainbow. It would suit you!
In the meantime, enjoy the warm weather in California. We've had it with winter.
Much love,
Kaaren & Richard
Ann,
It was a riot! Looks like there were some great Easter events in Paradise Valley, too.
Thank you so much for commenting.
Much love,
Kaaren & Richard
Tristine,
Thank you! Yes, all the festivities today were solely to give Richard the chance to get some colorful photos.
Coconut mochi in Makuu? This is a poem in itself, just the sounds. What delight.
Much love,
Kaaren & Richard
it was a great pleasure to have all the splendid photographers amongst us.. joy knows no bounds and colors just make them enjoyable more!! these are a part of 'great days in paris' irrespective of which country u come from. i believe if Ernest Hemingway would have been alive he would have dedicated one chapter of his moveable feast to this event!! kudos great work!! finally we have some moments to sing by and show to them to our friends n loved ones.. how we celebrate holi in paris in (cold temp)
Fine tableau of Ricardo's always exquisite photos!
Thank you both!
Neha, Ernest would no doubt have done such a chapter. Thank you for visiting Paris Play.
--Richard and Kaaren
Floyce and Karenlee:
I am humbled at your praise. Merci.
Richard (and Kaaren)
Photos, writing, a joy as always.....but all that messiness! And wall to wall bodies! Oy vey. Bismir.
Gives this northern Italian Capricorn girl tsuris.
Dear Kaaren and Richard,
Thanks for this rainbow.
I think you guys go to these events in order to find something to delight us with in PARISPLAY. Keep it up. Each new edition is an addition.
Love ya,
Bruce
Anna:
You would have been deep in the thick of it, remembering the sixties. You are our favorite pagan-hearted Christian soul.
Love,
Kaaren and Richard
Bruce:
You found us out. Everywhere we go in Paris, having fun and living in joy, it's not for us, really; it's for the readers of Paris Play. We are soooooooo selfless. ;-)
Hugs,
Richard and Kaaren