Lifestyles and leisure Holidays and holidays

In India and Nepal celebrates spring

Holi, festival of colors - and freedom

It is one of the most famous and loved festivals, the one that celebrates spring and life. Widows also join the dances, which in the Hindu tradition are kept to silence and sobriety - this is a liberating exception

07/03/2023

Holi is a bath of life and color. It takes place with the night of the first full moon of March, following the rules of the Hindu calendar, but the party begins the night before.

In the Hindu tradition it is the feast of spring: but also of rebirth, of the triumph of good over evil, of the encounter with others. It is celebrated with songs and dances and joy, throwing colored powders at each other, symbolizing the awakening of nature: we abandon every pain to embrace life in all its beauty, we get rid of constraints and obligations. In short, a great carnival - with promiscuity to which Indian and Nepalese culture rarely opens.

A symbolic and particular case is that of widows, to whom tradition and religious obligations impose a strict code of sobriety - no celebrations, dark colored clothes, reserved attitude. But Holi is an exception, the party where the rules are broken and overturned: and here are the widows who finally strip off the mask of affliction to join the dancers, tourists, joy, throwing colors and flower petals.