The Big Bags

Dear internets,

A few weeks ago, I took my beautiful new girlfriend to the Hare Krishna Holi Festival (aka: Festival of Colors). To the rest of the world, the Holi Festival is a Hindu tradition celebrating the arrival of spring with the death of winter. (Seriously, they literally burn a straw person in effigy to symbolize winter’s death.)  Here in Utah, however, the Holi Festival is not so much a Hindu celebration as it is a multicultural insurgence for thousands of ultra-conservative white college students.  I mean, what better way to show that you’re not like everyone else than by joining your entire neighborhood in a religious celebration you know nothing about except that you get to throw colored chalk at each other while making synchronized hand motions and chanting in unison?

Needless to say, I was a little weirded out by the whole event. Now, I’m not saying that the celebration itself was weird, I appreciate diversity in all of its shapes and colors. What really shocked me was how incredibly open and willing the entire crowd was to do whatever the man with the mic told them to do.  For a few minutes I felt like the mob could have easily turned into a Nazi army camp with all the “Krishna Krishna” hands in the air stuff, and nobody would have batted an eyelash. This did not happen (thankfully). Instead, the girlfriend and I just stood there in fascination watching people being overcome by the overwhelming power of being able to throw chalk. Now, I must admit it was kind of cool when the celebration chalk was thrown.  The thousands of handfulls full of colored powder literally blotted out the sun. (Not the place to be if you are an asthmatic. Found that out the hard way.)

By the end of the celbration, everyone was covered from head to toe in colored dust. We looked like a mob made up of a blind kid’s color by number paintings brought to life. I inhaled so much blue powder that my boogers looked like smushed blueberries. And the worst part, I felt like I traveled for over an hour (both ways) just to get dirty.

What’s worse is that when I washed the chalk-covered clothes that I wore to the festival, I forgot to separate them from the normal dirty clothes. I now have a drawer full of pink underwear. (It used to be white, I promise.) Also, spring still hasn’t arrived… it’s still snowing, and it’s April. I think the Holi Festival is broken.