holy holy

today was the indian holiday holy. no one was really able to tell me why this was a holiday, or its signifigance in the indian religion, but they said it was not to be missed. holy, for those of you that don't know, is a color festival and on this day if you are out of your room you are fair game.

color festival, the ENTIRE town shuts down, men with roving carts sell brightly colored powder for everyone to throw at everyone else. a painter would be please with the pallet ranging in colors from deep eggplant purple to a sunshine yellow. there are also fouler things used like motor oil, but yuck we won't get into that.
i've heard so many horror stories about this festival, just as i heard so many horror stories about traveling in india, and had made up my mind to hide out.
well long story short that didn't happen. i was drawn to the music, to the party. i stuck to the ghats where i thought it would be safe, nope. i was set on by a group of men and the first handful of color was splatted onto my breast as the man caught a quick grab. i yelled at him for it but he took off, his friends, being much nicer, patted a little more color onto my face. this turned me away from the main action, but i really felt a cat an mouse attraction to the middle of town where the whole thing was going on. should i shouldn't i? i mean i didn't want to put myself out there to get molested, but how often are you in india for Holy?

so a dancer friend and i skirted around the perimeter and made a mad dash for a roof top resturant, we caught a little color on the way up but we ran and found saftey four stories up. we hung out and hovered, getting more and more excited as we watched the chaos below. we were already a little dirty, so what was a little more? after about 30 mins we finally took the plunge into the maddness
.
mostly it was men. men dancing to some crappy trance and some killer bollywood, literally tearing the shirts off of all the men still wearing them and throwing them up to hang on a wire. people threw color by the bag full, sometimes the air was so thick with dust i wondered if it was some toxic gas setteling down to kill us. there was also liquid color squrted from water bottles and poured out of buckets onto unsuspecting heads.
my second face full of color was administered by a young indian man. he put his hands into the brightly colored sewer water and rubbed it all over my face. nice. if i didn't have a parasite yet i do now.
the rest is a blur of hands an color.
pushkar, being so small, is a relativly safe place for me to be for holy. a lot of the boys new us, and were respectful to us as part of the community, and we had one older man as a protector. so when they guys were getting a little too crazy towards us our protector hari would yell at them. not to say i wasn't groped a few other times or man handeled a bit, but it really wasn't too bad. is that silly to say? the bit of grabbing that went on wasn't too bad....but really they guys were quick to back off, and if they didn't other guys would step in and push them off.

my worst injury happened early on. our protector, hari, had a 50kg bag of color he opened for us to throw. i had two handfulls and tossed a little on my friend tera's head, she got a little crazy and with a full handful of color hit me point blank in the left eye. i had no time at all to close it and i went blind. i couldn't wipe it out with my hands or parts of my clothes because they were already full of colored powder. she screamed as soon as she did it and went running to grab me something clean to wipe my eye out with. but strangers to the rescue, i was pushed along a line of helpful hands to the water spicket and some kids helped me clean out my eye.
after that i was full on dirty and danced the day away.
the main square looked like a war zone.
i can't remeber the last time i had so much fun.

later i took a long shower and scrubbed scrubbed scrubbed. my clothes are ruined, my dreads, even though wrapped, are colored pink and blue, and my face and hands are tinted like a barbie house. i scrubbed so much that my face feels like i have a bad sun burn, putting lotion on it makes it sting.
i have been reassured that the color in the hair will last for months but the skin will only take 3 or 4 days to get back to normal. or maybe i should just turn it brown because i'd look so much better.