Holi Hai!!!

Holi! The festival of colors! (Follow the link for more details) Let me start by wishing you all a very happy holi and may this year brings to you and your family happiness and joy at par with the vivid colors this festival showers at us. This festival has a very long and rich history. (Something you can read in wiki if you are interested that is.) Let me come down to the things that are most memorable for people like us.
As most of my life I have lived in north India, I may have some different perspective of this festival. It starts with the Holika dhanan (The Holi bonfire). Preparations used to start many days ago where we all would pick up a place and start stacking up wood for the bonfire. Day by day it used to increase in size. Some times there was competition of whose bonfire pile is bigger or taller etc. (This by the way cleaned up all the mess created in a year by fallen tree branches, bushes, leaves and what not. Cleans up the city I say) On choti holi or what we can say is a day before holi we have the bonfire, a mark of start of holi, and enjoy. (Holi has started).
Holi is the day when we all come out and meet everyone, put colors on each other. Offer sweets, refreshing drinks and colors to people coming to home. This thing goes on till late afternoon after that we would clean up. (a tough thing to do after being painted black, blue, red). The milan (meeting, wishing and eating sweets) does not stop. Many times the milan goes on for days altogether. Many of you might remember putting oil and other creams before coming out to play. Elders generally played with dry colors (gulal) and kids (us) with strong wet color and lots of water. These colors take a lot of time to go also (Many times it takes weeks before the color comes of). Many on the roads are seen playing with paint. There are many variants also where you can use colored water, balloons, mud and what not. Bhang is the official thing used to get high on that day.
What remains of holi is a funfilled day or days (whatever is your idea) with pink, green, silver and all the other colors still on your face even after the skin is raw after scrubing, torn cloths (yes! It is fashion, tear the cloths. And some times people find it hard to cover up as everything goes… gross some say) and lots of memories…
Happy holi to all of you there again and enjoy this day of colors. :)