The Festival of Colors

When you encourage people to throw caution (and colored flour) to the wind, let go of the past, and welcome spring… you’re going to have a good time.
Basically, you come, buy colorful flour or wet paint. There’s food, which I didn’t get to try this year, but it smells great. There’s awesome music (lots of Santana!). And in an open field you toss your colors at your friends, family, and strangers. It’s all good natured, all in good but colorfully messy fun!
I’d recommend this festival to any age group. Seriously. Just be prepared.
I was worried my little ones would get freaked out by people throwing powder at them. Nope! They loved it. And they gave as good as they got. The 4 of us went through 15 bags of colored flour and 4 or 5 small jars of wet paint. We shared quite a few bags with passers by who spontaneously wanted to join in the fun. Each bag was $ 2, each pot of wet paint was $ 1 for 2(I think?). Everything washed out just fine (except that I’m refusing to wash my hoodie that my kids finger painted on).
Highlight of the day? Watching a lady run by and throw purple flour all over a police officer and run away. He was a good sport about it, which was adorable.

What can $ 2 buy you nowadays?
A small cup of mediocre coffee? A dozen eggs?
Well on a gorgeous spring day in Naperville’s Central Park, $ 2 can buy you a little bit of happiness in the form of colored flour. ROY G BIV. All colors of the rainbow represented! One bag goes a long way too. Showed up with Maryum S. and started out as a two person exchanged of powder puffs and blossomed into random walk by colorful powder attacks by some of the friendliest yet sneaky people.
How to color a perfect stranger:
Step 1: Buy a $ 2 bag of powder.
Step 2: Grab a handful of powder and clump it in your hand and be ready to pat it directly on a perfect stranger. This makes for a more lasting color effect on your intended victim rather than just throwing it at them in a rainbow dust that will mostly end up on the grass rather than the said person. You want evidence of your friendly attack. Think paintball.
Step 3: Come up with a witty icebreaker. (Ex: «I think you’ve got something on your shirt.» Then pat your green powder on!)
Step 4: Repeat! Repeat Repeat until your all colored out!
Kids are fair game too. Actually some of them were a little more brave than the adults! All in good fun.
For $ 5, you can get a generous plate of Indian delights. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to partake since we had plans of owning the lunch buffet at Cuisine of India later that day.
A band provided a fun soundtrack for color pelting. Every hour or so, they’d gather all the participants to the band stage to reward the most colorful person with a gift certificate to OMango (new Chipotle-​style Indian restaurant that opened in Naperville/​Aurora?).
I’ll be back next year for sure.

Cue «I’ve had the time of my life» from Dirty Dancing. Okay, now let’s do this!
Next to a Flaming Lips concert, this might have been the most colorful and fun time I’ve ever had, and it was all in my home town of Naperville. The Festival of Colors, or «Holi» is a festival held every year (Primarily in countries with large Indian populations) to celebrate the passing of Winter and arrival of Spring. It’s meant to bring people, whether friend or foe, together (and also have a great time) while throwing colorful powder (flour) into the air and all yours cares into the wind.
I arrived to the fest a little before it’s commencement and stayed through till the end. In fact, the little bit of rain we had that day only made it more fun. There was live music, first some traditional Indian performers, then a rock cover band that played some great Sublime, U2, Oasis, Marshall Tucker Band, and more chill tunes to bring people together.
There’s one food tent that serves the most delicious Indian/​vegetarian platter for only $ 4. Quite the steal, IMO. There were also a few other tented areas, our fave being the Kashmir Culture Booth which served the most delicious hot teas with flaked almonds and cinnamon-​y Indian «sweet breads» all free of charge.
The color pouches are $ 2 each and come in blue, yellow, green, pink, orange, and purple. We weren’t planning on spending more that $ 20 but it was just so much fun that we couldn’t stop and ran back to the car for more money twice.
If you go, you should defo plan on getting pretty messy. Again, we stayed for the entire fest so we were by far the messiest people there but even the attendees who didn’t plan on joining in on the dirty colorful fun couldn’t resist as reporters and photographers threw their inhibitions to the wind and risked the well being of their costly camera equipment in the name of fun. The spirit of the festival WILL draw you in. Resistance is futile.
Now cue U2 because once you’ve been to Holi, you can totally get down with «we are one, but we’re not the same». There’s no point in bothering to get primped or even shower for the fest because at the end, we all looked the same and I think that beyond the messy colors, it was fun to meet people of all ages, shapes, sizes, genders, ethnicities, and more and feel like we’re all connected.