Celebrate Holi at UF this weekend

This month, on March 26th, the Indian Student Association (ISA) will be celebrating the festival of spring, Holi, and welcomes all students and people from the community to join in on the fun. Not only will there be free food and a chance to throw colored powder at anyone and everyone in sight, you will also get to learn about the Indian culture and this awesome holiday.

We sat down with two directors for UF Holi, Anjelika Chatwal and Dhara Patel, to learn more.

What is Holi and what is its origin?

Anjelika: Holi is a traditional Indian cultural holiday that celebrates the commencement of spring. In India, everyone gets together on this day for the national holiday, which is on March 23rd this year, and everyone wears white and throws colored powder at each other to signify bright colors, diversity, and unity. Throwing the colored powder at people we don’t know brings about happiness and excitement.

Dhara: It’s also known as the ‘Festival of Colors’.

Is there a specific place that Holi is celebrated in the world?

Anjelika: It originates from India, but it is celebrated within Indian communities all over the world. People are able to showcase our culture and celebrate with anyone whether they’re Indian or not.

Dhara: It is celebrated all over the US, not just on the UF campus, but on other college campuses as well. People from other colleges have reached out to us wondering how we put on our Holi event. It’s really cool to see that other cultures want to bring Holi to their campus and spread awareness of our culture.

What are the customs and rituals for the holiday?

Dhara: The customs and rituals are mostly throwing brightly colored powder at each other while wearing white and usually towards the end, people will spray water at each other, too.

Anjelika: There is a lot of music and dancing incorporated into that. We all just get to have a fun time.

UF Holi 2015

Can anyone come to this event?

Anjelika: Yes, anyone can come to this event. It’s completely free and there will be free Krishna lunch provided by the Krishna House and there will also be free T-shirts that we will be providing for the first thousand people that come to the event. Anyone from the community can come to this event, not just UF students.

When and where is it?

Dhara: The event will be taking place on March 26th at Norman Field from 11am-3pm.

Is there something specific to wear?

Dhara: Yes, just wear all white.

Why do you think it’s important to celebrate this on campus?

Dhara: Last year as a freshman at the Holi event, I saw a lot of people together from different cultures and ethnicities and everyone was having a good time and learned about our culture, too. So many people from my dorm came and gained a new appreciation for Indian culture because they never knew about it, but since they came out to the event, they wanted to know more about our customs. Everyone was so accepting and open. I see Holi as the entryway to our culture for everyone to enjoy and from there I’ve seen it expand to people wanting to come out to more events by the ISA and see the other rituals we have.

Anjelika: We started off our first year with having around 800 people come to the event and last year it grew to 1500 people. It makes me so happy to see people coming up to our tabling events asking when the Holi event is going to happen or seeing people walking around campus with their Holi shirt. It brings a sense of satisfaction that our event that started off as just an ISA event has branched out to the entire campus and that we’re able to draw such a wide audience from such diverse groups around the campus.