Question
Festivals: What is Holi?
Answer
I'll add a personal take: a thoroughly awful "festival" during which drunk and stoned extroverts try to drag introverts into unwanted physical revelry. The festivities are occassions for bullying horseplay in kids, strongly sexualized melees among teenagers and twenty-somethings, especially in more hidebound traditional communities, and furtive extra-marital groping and frottage among many adults.
I thoroughly hated the festival. Still do. I didn't mind some of the lighter, not-too-physical horseplay with water balloons and pistols with a couple of my regular same-age playmates, but I detested being dragged into bigger, rougher melees with strangers, which were much more "hands on" gropey. I especially hated mixed-age ones with older kids (including many bullies) and adults. Fortunately, as a South Indian, I was spared the worst of it, since we didn't celebrate it at home. We'd just visit neighbors who observed it. It was the one time of year I used to wish we lived in the South (in most ways, I still prefer the North, not least because I am most fluent and only literate in Hindi). Not having to participate in Holi is one of the perks of living in the US for me now.
When I was a kid, I would try to hide to avoid it, but would usually be discovered and dragged into the so-called "fun." I still remember a Holi when I was about 7 or 8 and got drenched by a huge bucket of color by an adult neighbor. I loudly burst into tears and refused to come out for the rest of the day (at other times, the guy was actually one of my favorite adults). When I got older, I'd either reluctantly participate at the minimum socially acceptable level or stay indoors.
I am not alone in detesting Holi. I'd say at least half the population hates it and would be happy to see it either banned or confined to a specific place/time for those who want to participate.
Holi also has a very dark side for women. It is so associated with molestation and rape episodes that a "holi rape scene" has become an established Bollywood trope. I suspect child sexual abuse is also common.
Finally, despite all the color, it is visually the ugliest festival in the world. Nobody who "plays" holi comes out looking good. It's like forced participation in rugby-lite in mud and garish paints, while dressed in thin clothes designed to drape in thoroughly unflattering ways when wet. Even shapely young people don't look too good.
In a way, Holi is the dark side counterpart to Diwali, a visually stunning and thoroughly positive and serene (modulo fire injuries) festival that I totally loved, like most people. Holi is not visual at all, despite nominally being about color. It is entirely tactile. A once-a-year time for a very repressed and physically undemonstrative culture (India is not exactly the most hugs-and-kisses culture in the world -- even handshakes are a bit alien, the traditional greeting being the namaste) to cut loose in a rather extreme and alarming embrace of its collective Jungian shadow.
I'd much rather Indian culture shed its ridiculous prudery during the rest of the year and get comfortable with more Western-style PDA (which can get you lynched and/or arrested). This annual descent into a dark frenzy needs to be rendered unnecessary for the health of the collective psyche. It might have once been healthy in pre-industrial village India, but in a modern setting it is an excruciating time for half of us.
Note: this is clearly getting downvoted like crazy by people who are offended. To those who think this is just a personal opinion: this isn't physics, this is culture. There are only personal opinions. The question asked 'what is Holi?' and not 'what is the origin of Holi' or 'how is Holi observed?' where objective answers might conceivably be given. Finally, for those upset about the negative portrayal of Indian culture, this *is* a negative element of Indian culture for a significant number of people.
I thoroughly hated the festival. Still do. I didn't mind some of the lighter, not-too-physical horseplay with water balloons and pistols with a couple of my regular same-age playmates, but I detested being dragged into bigger, rougher melees with strangers, which were much more "hands on" gropey. I especially hated mixed-age ones with older kids (including many bullies) and adults. Fortunately, as a South Indian, I was spared the worst of it, since we didn't celebrate it at home. We'd just visit neighbors who observed it. It was the one time of year I used to wish we lived in the South (in most ways, I still prefer the North, not least because I am most fluent and only literate in Hindi). Not having to participate in Holi is one of the perks of living in the US for me now.
When I was a kid, I would try to hide to avoid it, but would usually be discovered and dragged into the so-called "fun." I still remember a Holi when I was about 7 or 8 and got drenched by a huge bucket of color by an adult neighbor. I loudly burst into tears and refused to come out for the rest of the day (at other times, the guy was actually one of my favorite adults). When I got older, I'd either reluctantly participate at the minimum socially acceptable level or stay indoors.
I am not alone in detesting Holi. I'd say at least half the population hates it and would be happy to see it either banned or confined to a specific place/time for those who want to participate.
Holi also has a very dark side for women. It is so associated with molestation and rape episodes that a "holi rape scene" has become an established Bollywood trope. I suspect child sexual abuse is also common.
Finally, despite all the color, it is visually the ugliest festival in the world. Nobody who "plays" holi comes out looking good. It's like forced participation in rugby-lite in mud and garish paints, while dressed in thin clothes designed to drape in thoroughly unflattering ways when wet. Even shapely young people don't look too good.
In a way, Holi is the dark side counterpart to Diwali, a visually stunning and thoroughly positive and serene (modulo fire injuries) festival that I totally loved, like most people. Holi is not visual at all, despite nominally being about color. It is entirely tactile. A once-a-year time for a very repressed and physically undemonstrative culture (India is not exactly the most hugs-and-kisses culture in the world -- even handshakes are a bit alien, the traditional greeting being the namaste) to cut loose in a rather extreme and alarming embrace of its collective Jungian shadow.
I'd much rather Indian culture shed its ridiculous prudery during the rest of the year and get comfortable with more Western-style PDA (which can get you lynched and/or arrested). This annual descent into a dark frenzy needs to be rendered unnecessary for the health of the collective psyche. It might have once been healthy in pre-industrial village India, but in a modern setting it is an excruciating time for half of us.
Note: this is clearly getting downvoted like crazy by people who are offended. To those who think this is just a personal opinion: this isn't physics, this is culture. There are only personal opinions. The question asked 'what is Holi?' and not 'what is the origin of Holi' or 'how is Holi observed?' where objective answers might conceivably be given. Finally, for those upset about the negative portrayal of Indian culture, this *is* a negative element of Indian culture for a significant number of people.