India: A country with tradition and colors like silk

Color and variety are synonymous with Indian culture, beliefs, and way of life. A country steeped in traditions, India charms and bedazzles all the visitors with a kaleidoscopic rendezvous. Every corner, every street and every city has a story to tell — all you have to do is listening. It is tradition, culture, and celebrations that truly bring this country together. One of the most symbolic celebrations in the country is called "Holi" the Festival of Colors.

Holi The Festival Of Color

A festival that celebrates victory of good over evil, and arrival of spring & harvests to home. It’s the festival of colors, emotions, and happiness. The best way to express your joy and happiness in an agricultural country is with the vibrant silk like colors of the rainbow.

The central ritual of Holi is throwing and applying colored water and powders (silk color) on friends and family, which gives the holiday its common name "Festival of Colors." On Holi, whole of the country is painted in mesmerizing hues of blues, yellows, magentas, greens, violets, and more.

While dry powder colors are called "gulal," colors mixed with water are called "rang." Tables with bags of silk colors are lined up as neighbors and family await the others to enter the grounds. It’s a day to celebrate and let go — loud music, local brews, and fun-filled chatter are all essential elements of the celebrations.

But most importantly, Holi is a day when you will see the streets and homes of India doused in almost every color imaginable. Each color has significance, religious or otherwise. While the most popular colors are the brightest — silk blue, silk yellow, silk red, silk purple, silk pink, and silk green — there are colors that are conspicuously absent, traditionally. These include black and white.

Color Symbolism Of Holi

Though white symbolizes a sense of purity, it is also a color of mourning. Widows in India, unlike in their western counterparts, retire to a white-only dress code. And while black is considered ugly, evil, and undesirable, it is relied upon heavily to ward off evil, as is evident in the ceremony of putting a black dot on a new-born baby’s face to ward off the evil eye.

During the early days, the "gulal" colors of Holi were made at home using flowers of the tree, otherwise called the "Flame of the Forest" or Tesu in local Hindi language. The flowers, once plucked, were dried in the sun and then ground to a fine dust. The powdered dust, once mixed in water, gave way to the most brilliant hue of saffron-red. The saffron-red pigment and colored powdered talc called "aabir" was the mainstay at Holi celebrations, long before the chemical colors of today.