Holi: The colours above races
Written by Arohan Banik
Once, an evil king lived in India, who was also known as a demon king. His name was Hiranyakashyap and he thought that he was the most powerful king of the whole world. He wanted everyone to pray to him. But Hiranyakashyap’s son, Prahlad, a brave, small boy was not scared at all. He didn't pray to his father because Prahlad was a devotee of one God named Lord Vishnu. The king was very angry and he tried to scare Prahlad, but he was not afraid. Prahlad still did not even pray to him, not even once. Then the king got extremely mad and wanted to hurt him. The king’s sister named Holika had a spooky power. Holika could sit on fire. The demon king forced Prahlad to sit on Holika’s lap so he can be burnt by the fire from Holika. But when Prahlad sat on Holika's lap, something unusual happened, the fire could not burn Prahlad, rather, Holika got burnt in the fire. This happened because of Lord Vishnu, who protected Prahlad from the fire by using one of his powers and burning Holika from her power. Because Prahlad was a good boy, people always say that good power can always defeat bad power. Since then, a night before Holi, we do a bonfire which shows a symbol of Holika, the evil power burnt in the fire. We call it Holika Dahan. Later another famous God named Krishna used to play pranks with colours to his partner Radha. After that people started doing the same thing playing Holi with colours.
On March 28th this year, we celebrated Holi at
Atlanta. It was still in the pandemic
but we wanted to celebrate because my mom and dad already got their vaccine for
Coronavirus. Several guests came to our apartment. Before we played Holi, we
did a snack party, there were cheese pizza, idli, salad and fried nuggets. We
call them pakora. We also made sweet dishes. Then we started playing Holi. The
colours were pink, red, orange and green. At first, the four colours were only
on my cheeks, after some time, my whole face was covered with all the colours! It
was so much of fun. Everyone played and played, throwing and spreading colours at
each other and with all these, it made a big mess in our house. The colours
fell on the floor by all these actions. Then, we went outside and took many
pictures while me and my toddler friend named Aaron were hiding from everyone. Everyone’s
face was covered with so much of colours that their faces were unrecognizable. While
playing Holi, we should also be aware that the colours should not go to our
nose and mouth because these could have many chemicals that could harm people. We
should also never put colours on animals like cats and dogs because it can be
harmful to them also.
We play Holi in different age groups. Elder people play Holi
with children that they would pay respect and they would get blessings from their
elders. The first time when I played Holi, I was 1 year old baby, we were in
Chandigarh that time. My neighbours came to my house, they put colours on me
and gave me many candies. I don’t remember about that celebration but my Mom and
Dad said we had lots of fun. When my dad was about my age, he used to play Holi
in his hometown with 70-80 people. It looks like a crazy celebration. Then I asked
my dad that can we go there? My dad said yes, once we will go to his hometown and
play Holi together. Don’t you think it will be exciting?
In our world, there are different races with different skin
colours like brown, black and white. But segregating different races by their
colours won’t treat people equally. In our life, races should not be separated
by the colours but should be united by the colours, just like our Holi celebration.
Edited by my dad, Avijit Banik
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