NEW DELHI — There's no way to avoid getting smeared with colored powder, hosed with water guns or hit with sparkle-filled water balloons if you venture out of your home in India on Friday.
The streets come alive as the country celebrates Holi, the Hindu festival of colors and one of the biggest and most vivid festivals on the calendar.
It has also grown in popularity abroad, including in neighboring Nepal, which has large Hindu population, and in the U.S, where color-throwing events have been organized over the weekend.
But in India, it’s more raucous.
Kids especially look forward to it, buying dozens of water balloons and water guns in advance and filling them up with colored water the night before the festival.
They store them in a giant buckets full of water, on roofs or driveways, ready to aim at passersby.
Moments after walking out of my front door in New Delhi on Friday, I was hit in the torso by three palm-sized balloons, despite trying to dodge the kid who popped up out of a garden.
Grown-ups spare no effort either. If you're spotlessly clean, you're a target.
Wielding a palette of colored powder in sachets, my neighbors emerged and were quick to make sure I was covered.
It takes a few days to completely wash the colors off the body. But as the saying in Hindi goes, you’re not allowed to be offended on Holi.
So revelers coat themselves with oil and put on clothes they don’t mind getting permanently stained.
They start early, and as the day goes on, the quiet residential streets turn into dance floors with festive Bollywood music.
Another Holi speciality, off limit to children, is "Bhang," a paste of cannabis leaves commonly consumed in the form of a milkshake or other cool drinks. Bhang consumption is mostly legal in India, in contrast to smoking weed, which is illegal.
The festival marks the beginning of spring, symbolizes the defeat of evil and celebrates the love between the Hindu deities Krishna and Radha. Some families fete the eve of the main festival day with religious ceremonies and bonfires.
But nowadays, the festival is mostly about having fun with family and friends, with plenty of traditional sweets and color to go around.
Mithil Aggarwal reported from New Delhi, and Max Butterworth from London.
