In addition to the religious meaning of the festival, some have adopted it in the United States for the spectacle and entertainment. Holi Festival is celebrated on the last full moon day of the lunar month of Phalguna , which is generally around the end of March.
The exact date of Holi may vary from year to year. The Holi Festival is wild: think big crowds, colored dye, water guns, music, dancing, and partying. During the Holi Festival, people dance through the streets and throw colored dye on each other. The Holi Festival is a happy time when people come together as one and let go of their inhibitions. If you live in the United States, you may be able to find a large city that hosts a Holi Festival, or Festival of Colors. For the full experience though, you need to attend a Holi Festival celebration in India — and a great way to experience Holi in India is to volunteer there.
There are many programs that can offer you amazing experiences in India. Here are some of our favorites. International Volunteer HQ offers a number of volunteer opportunities in or near the Indian cities of Delhi and Kerala. In Delhi, volunteers can assist with childcare, health initiatives, and English teaching. IVHQ program participants can volunteer in India for as little as one week, and as long as six months.
This organization even has programs that combine adventures and sightseeing with volunteer opportunities. Programs range in duration from two weeks to at least 24 weeks, and they can be spread across different cities. Whether you want to road trip across India, take on a medical internship in Delhi, or even care for elephants, you can find an opportunity with GoEco.
They provide several ways to make a difference while also giving you great experience in your chosen field of study. A Broader View has multiple programs in two major areas in India. In Udaipur, they offer construction and renovation, child care and teaching programs, and even service opportunities at an animal welfare center. In Jaipur, you can work with children, teach English, volunteer with elephants, and much more.
Projects can be anywhere from two to eight weeks long. Global Leadership Adventures GLA is an organization specially-designed to give teenagers incredible experiences abroad. In India, GLA offers a day program in Jaipur to help children by supporting infrastructure projects at their schools. Red colour can also be obtained from juice of tomatoes and carrots. This can be diluted with sufficient quantity of water to remove the stickiness.
Blue Dry Colour The Jacaranda flowers can be dried in the shade and ground to obtain a beautiful blue powder. The flowers bloom in summers. The blue Hibiscus which is found in Kerala can be dried and powdered just like the red hibiscus Wet Colour Crush the berries fruits of the Indigo plant and add to water for desired colour strength. In some Indigo species the leaves when boiled in water yield a rich blue. Slice or grate one Beet root. Soak in 1 litre of water for a wonderful magenta.
Boil or leave overnight for a deeper shade. Boil the peels of 10 — 15 pink Onions in half litre of water for an orangish-pink colour. Remove the peels before using to remove the smell. Soak Kachnar Bauhinia variegata flowers pink variety in water overnight, or boil for a pinkish colour.
Saffron Wet Colour. The Flame of the Forest Butea monosperma , known as Tesu, Palash or Dhak in vernacular languages, is the source of the wonderful, traditional colour for Holi. The flowers are soaked overnight in water and can also be boiled to obtain a fragrant yellowish — orange colored water. The dried flowers can be dried and powdered for a orange powder. Legend says that Lord Krishna used to play Holi with Tesu flowers, and the flowers also have a lot of medicinal properties.
Tesu blooms during month of March. Soak them in water to get a pleasant coloured orange. Mix a pinch of Sandalwood powder from Ujjain also used in our temples in one litre of water for an instant, beautiful and fragrant saffron colour. Leave for few hours and grind to make a fine paste.
Dilute with water for desired colour strength. Though expensive, it is excellent for our skin. Brown Wet Colour. Kattha Acacia catechu , the one eaten in pan, when mixed with water will give a brownish colour. Boil Tea or Coffee leaves in water. Cool and use. Black Wet Colour. Dilute with water and use. Extract juice of black grapes and dilute with sufficient quantity of water to remove stickiness. I am so thankful that you described Holi in such detail. Do you have a address or phone number to get the powder in the US?
And is there a specific day of the year Holi takes place. I know you said to welcome spring. Thank you again Kate. Glad you enjoyed the article about Holi festival. It is usually in March. Your articles are really interesting. But amazing article. I believe today that people are more concerned with health issues related to the celebration and are making safe powders.
Holi is a fun filled and very colourful day! I also wrote about Holi on my blog. Thanks for stopping by my article on Holi and letting me know about yours. It is such a fun and colorful celebration that I love knowing more about it. Color Meaning. Color Psychology. Color Theory. Books About Color. Quotes About Color. Color Around the World. Business Colors. Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page. Member Login.
Be a color insider! Holi Festival Celebrates With Color. Image: Bigstock. He and Krishna are almost always shown dressed in yellow. In paintings of these deities, artists in India sometimes used one of the stranger pigments in history: Indian yellow. Through the 18th and 19th centuries, wooden boxes of this strange-scented pigment would arrive at the London docks. When the colormen, whose job was to process and sell paint to artists, picked up the deliveries, they had little idea of how it was made or what it was.
Just that it made a fairly good watercolor, even though it was rubbish in oil. Perhaps it was urine mixed with turmeric, speculated amateur artist Roger Dewhurst in , writing anxiously to friends, wondering how to make these strange cakes into paint. Others thought it might come from snakes, or buffalo. Then in a communication was delivered to the Royal Society of Arts written by a Mr. Mukharji of Calcutta present day Kolkata. He had visited the only place where Indian yellow was sourced—a suburb of Monghyr now Munger in Bihar, about miles north of Kolkata, where he watched cows eating mango leaves, and then being encouraged to urinate into a bucket the process is not unlike milking.
But the practice was cruel; the restricted diet left the cows thin and malnourished. I visited Munger in while researching a book about the stories of colors around the world.
My translator had not turned up, and unable to speak more than a few words of Hindi, I acted out a ridiculous charade of cows, urine, mango leaves and paint to a gathering crowd of amused locals. It felt insane to think that any trace of this obscure paint might be found. But we do have a mango garden. A crowd of excited, singing children led me to the walled mango orchard.
And like an explorer come finally to the source of a river, I knew I was at the place that for years had provided a mysterious yellow to soldier artists of the British Empire and Hindu artists wanting to paint the garments of Krishna and Vishnu the elusive color of sunshine. I remember wishing I knew what this oddest of paints had smelled like and thinking I would probably never know. But several years later, in the wonderful, old-fashioned L.
The director, Nicholas Walt, opened a jar. It smelled of spices and sunshine and heat and flowers and dust. In a funny way that jar of Indian yellow smelled absolutely of India.
In , a deserter from the Army of the British East India Company traveling in disguise as an American from Kentucky became the first foreigner to record what he saw in the ruins of Mohenjo Daro, in what was then northern India.
The fiber most likely had been bright red—or perhaps bright orange or deep purple—and had been dyed from the root of the madder plant.
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