Festival of Colors

This past weekend, I had the awesome opportunity to go participate in the Festival of Colors. Festival of Colors is a celebration of Spring in India. The tradition is to throw colored powder at each other in the celebration of love and spring. If you love someone, you smear the powder in their face, rather than throwing it. There is a Indian temple in Spanish Fork, Utah where this event happened. Before the festival started, we were able to walk through the temple and hear people singing and see them dancing. It was so cool to see other cultures and their customs. In their temple, they have many paintings and sculptures of their God and their prayers. One prayer that was said many times and what the crowd said before we threw the color was the Hare Krishna Chant. It goes:
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare
We said this chant over and over many times throughout the festival. We also said Shanti which means peace many times. It was just a celebration of Happiness and love for each other. One thing they emphasized was the love of variety and differences. Even though everyone there wasn't the same religion, race, age or anything, we could all come together to celebrate just that, or differences. It was amazing how many people came and participated. They have so many come that they have two different celebrations so they can accommodate more people. I thought it was interesting that most of the people that were running the event weren't Indian. It just showed that it didn't matter your background, you could still participate. They also had different groups doing Indian Dancing and we listened to a lot of Indian music. I've been doing a lot of research lately about India and they have really cool ceremonies and celebrations for many different things. My roommate's grandpa is from India and I had the opportunity to meet him yesterday. He showed us pictures of him at the Festival of Colors in India. It was cool to think that we were able to celebrate the same thing here in Utah. This was a really fun experience that I hope I can be a part of again. Not just because you get thrown with dyed powder and get to be colorful, but the experience of witnessing another culture and how differences don't matter.