Holi

     Sunday was the religious festival of Holi, another occasion of pure pandamonium. Hoil, for me, is the key to the spirit of Hinduism. Religion in the West is celebrated as a outwardly solemn event, lead by a priest.in an ordered fashion in contemplative churches. Hindu ritual on the other hand is noisy, it is invasive, it is exuberant, and it goes on for a long time. Chanting, the crush of bodies filing past the temple, dancing, pushing, grasping, praying. And Holi catches all of this and elevates it to a further level.
     The outward concept of Holi is that entire populations of a city arm themselves with a vairety of coloured powders and run around throwing them at each other.  It's a lot of fun and based on the idea that 'God isn't looking' so I am told.

     The specific backstory is a little bizarre. A deamon called Hiranyakashipu was elevated to the positon of invulnerability by Brahma. This privilege eventually inspied him to vanity (quite a big paralell here to Satan in the Biblical tradition) and he wanted to be worshipped instead of Brahma which was wicked. Hiranyakashipu then had a son and a daughter. The son was good and prayed to Brahma, the daughter was bad and followed in her father - therefore evil Hiranyakashipu wanted to kill his son. He attempted this a variety of ways which failed, eventually deciding to burn him on a fire with his sister (the sister was luckily invulnerable to fire so he thought this was a good trick). However Brahma protected the son and revoked the daughter's (called Holika) invulnerability so that she died.
     Why this means you throw around colours is not clear. And it is a convoluted origin I know, but this is the sort of detailed richness of Hinduism that goes right down to the wall carvings of temples which team and overflow with images and deities.

     Sadly there is a bit of abuse of the festival too. While most of the decent sort celebrate Holi with their families many local sex starved young (and old....) men on the street use it as an excuse to grope foreign women. This is done in a sort of good humoured way, as after all 'God is not looking', but I lost my rag as the line was stepped over time and time again with the people I was with. The constant regarding of foreign girls as sex objects by a proportion of the locals gets you eventually. Such is life I suppose.