We were invited to a week late Holi celebrations organized by Marwari mitra mandal in Singapore.
Holi is generally celebrated in the neighbourhood with family and friends, so we felt a little awkward at the thought of formally going to a place to play holi with strangers. Still, we decided to go thinking at least Pranav will enjoy with his pichkari. When we reached the venue in Katong we were surprised to hear bollywood songs blaring and large crowd already immersed in colours.
As usual, Pranav cried whenever someone put colour on him but started to enjoy when everybody else was done. There were stalls with several Indian delights and we relished the Jalebis and dahi badas and samosas and aloo-poori (that too without onlion and garlic !)
Now....after being drenched in water and colours, we realized that we hadn't brought any change of clothes..oops !. We did not want everyone to stare at us in public transport so we tried stopping a cab, fearing that he might refuse to take us in....but thankfully he got us in and was quite interested in knowing about the festival, why it is celebrated ,what kind of colours were used , how these colours were made etc. Generally, the cab drivers are very friendly and often try to strike a conversation.
At home, after having a wash we realized (too much of realizations today !) that the colours didn't come off fully and we all had to field questions in office/school the next day on why we were looking so 'pink'. Kapil still has pink toe nails and cannot step out of house without socks :-))
In all a great experience !!
Same here Shubhs! We celebrated in a mandir and i wanted to pick up food on the way back cause i was in no mood to cook. But my dear husband refused to stop even for a drive thru pickup! But it is fun to celebrate Holi on foreign land.
ReplyDeleteAnd frankly I had not celebrated holi so well in India as here in US. I think people here walk an extra step to cling to their heritage and do everything with a little more enthusiasm. We in India, specially in metros are becoming more sophisticated (uptight) about the whole stuff.