Biking Adventure in the ATL

K and I rented bikes on Saturday, and went for a lovely 15 mile bike ride to enjoy the weather. We were all painted from our celebration of Holi, so I'm sure we made quite a scene. The destination of our ride was to the pet store to buy my fish, Dorian, a plant and some food.

The ride itself was awesome, and greatly entertaining. The first excitement was my almost running over a squirrel. It dashed out in front of me, and I almost hit it. I think it was equally traumatic for both of us. The ride was bumpy, but we got there eventually. I kept overhearing people saying "look at those girls, they sure got paint balled." Small children stared the most. It kept occurring to me how different our ride, and our reception, would have been if we had been in India. In Atlanta, we were weirdos, in Indian we would have been the norm. Oh perception, how fickle you are.



Anyway, the picture is of people celebrating Holi (not us, obviously). It's a hindu celebration where people throw brightly colored powder on one another.

The story according to http://www.thecolorsofindia.com/ of how holi originated (or at least my FAVORITE version), goes like this:

Love Play of Radha & Krishna
Lord Krishna has often been portrayed as a naughty prankster in his childhood and a lover-boy in his youth. His beloved Radha and the cowherd girls 'Gopis' in general loved him even more for his pranks and eve teasing. The Holi of Braj is famous all over India for its intimate connection with the divine deities and their love plays. It is said that when Krishna was a young boy, he asked the reason for his dark color while Radha was so fair. His mother Yashoda playfully suggested that he should smear color on Radha's face too and change her complexion to any color he wanted. Captivated by the idea, Krishna proceeded to do so and thus, introduced the play of colors on Holi.

Even today, Holi is one of the most important festival of Braj, where the men of Nandgaon and women of Barsana play 'latthmar Holi' in the remembrance of the playful throw of colors by Krishna on 'Gopis' and their resistance. The trace of eroticism and romance pervades Holi as depicted in the love plays of Krishna and Radha. In Mathura, Vrindavan, Gokul and Barsana, Holi is a two-week long festival featuring play of colors, folk songs called 'Hori', folk dances such as Raas-Lila, staging the various aspects of Radha and Krishna's love.





This picture is of my back, still stained from Holi. I am reasonably certain the the dye stayed fast because of the ammonia and urea in my sweat, which caused the dye to fix. It makes me laugh anyway.