THE LAND OF FESTIVALS

If you want to enjoy festivals you have to be an Indian. Nobody enjoys festivals, with the same intensity & enthusiasm as Indians. When i say Indian i would rather mean Hindu's, no doubt India is a land of varied religions, & cultures. Govt declares official Holidays on all the major festivals of all the religions, you take it Moharaam & Id's, or Christmas, Good Friday, Parsi New Year, or Budhha Jayanti (The day Lord Buddha was born), all these days are National Holidays. Search the Globe and you will not come across any country, which has national holidays for other Religions, over and above the major religion. That's the reason India has acquired a name as a secular country across the universe. All the above festivals are widely known, then what are we reading out here, yes some of the major festivals of the Hindu religion. If you are not aware, India is a land where you will find different types of people, caste, creed, each having a different culture. If we go through all the festivals of all the creed across India, it will turn out to be a big encyclopaedia.
Today lets see one of the major festivals of India The Festival of Colour.

The festival of colour, celebrated in the month of March, which is also called HOLI. Holi is celebrated for the victory of Good over Evil, (Most of the Hindu festivals are for that reason only), the story line says that in olden times there used to be a King called Hiranyakashipu, he was a Evil Demon, & did not like anybody worshipping any GOD, He proclaimed himself as God & instructed everyone to worship him, He was very powerful as he had a Boon from Lord Brahma, (One from the eternal Trinity of Hindus, the other being Vishnu & Shankar) (The Brahma is the Creator, Vishnu the Preserver & the Shankar the Destroyer). The Boon he had asked was such that he cannot die at Day nor at Night, He cannot die inside the House nor outside the house, he cannot die by any weapon, he cannot be killed either by a Human Being or an Animal, He cannot die on the Ground or in the Air. Due to this Boon he became more powerful & harrassed his people & even Gods, He had one Son named Prahlad, who was very pious & a worshipper of Lord Vishnu, the King did not liked it, & ordered his Son to be killed, the king tried all the methods but could not kill his son as all the times Lord Vishnu saved him.On one good day the King asked his sister Holika, (who had a boon that Fire cannot touch her, ) to take the boy & sit in the fire, as fire will not burn her but kill his son. Holika sat in the fire, but inspite of the boon she was burnt alive & the King's son Prahlad was saved, this day is celebrated as Holi across India.

On each & every corner across the country a prye is lit, to celebrate the win of Good over the Evil. The preparations starts quiet early a couple of days in advance of digging the ground & bring wooden logs, which are arranged in a specific way. At an auspisious time the prye is lit. The married women worship the fire & performs Pooja by putting in Coconuts. The Men dance around the fire. The next day is celebrated with colours by all the people, young & Old, men & women all come out of their houses & splash colours on each other. The dry colour is called GULAL, which comes in naturally in Red colour, but nowadays you can see YELLOW, BLUE, WHITE and even BLACK colours too. Then we have water colours which are mixed with water and water is spashed on other friends and relatives. In villages this is played with Mud & Cow dung, the water tanks are transformed into colour ponds and you can see people throwing wach other & say “HAPPY HOLI” sweets are distributed to all the people. This is the festival of Holi. These festival also marks an end of Winter season, and the start of Summer.

Oh you want to hear what happened to King Hiranyakashipu ? He became very sad at the death of his sister & next day told his son to embrace a big pillar of iron which was made red hot by heating. As soon as his son Prahlad went to embrace the pillar, with a big bang Lord Vishnu emerged from it, he was in a shape of half human half Lion (Narsimha) a fight went on between two in the end Narsimha took hold of the king lifted him, & sat in between door & took the king on his lap, which suggested neither inside his palace nor outside.
The Narsimha roared, & told the King, look out you Evil, its afternoon, neither Day nor Night, you are neither inside house nor outside, we are on the doorway,you are not on the Ground nor in the Air, you are on my Lap, I am neither a human being nor an Animal. And I am not going to use any weapon to kill you because i will kill you by my nails (lion nails) & thus he killed the Evil demon.

The Narsimha is worshipped as one of the 9 Avataar's of Lord Vishnu, as its told in the Hindu mythology that the Lord Vishnu has decended to earth 8 times, & the 9th time will be the last time, which is due. Anybody wants to know more about the other Avataar's of Lord Vishnu, pls wait.