A festival that celebrates the victory of good over evil, Holi is a celebration of the arrival of spring and harvests Its the Holi festival of colors, emotions, and happiness.
Its based on the legend of Krishna, who was about the blue colour of his face, due to being poisoned by breast milk.
The central ritual of Holi is the throwing and applying of colored water and powders on friends and family, which gives the holiday name Festival of Colors.
Brightly colored powders are the mainstay of the Holi festival, during which men, women, and children carry powders and liquid colors to throw and smear on the clothes and faces of neighbors and relatives. While dry powder colors are called gulal, colors mixed with water are called rang.
While the most popular colors are the brightest — blue, yellow, red, purple, pink, and green — some colors are conspicuously absent, traditionally. These include black and white.
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 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 newborn babys 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. The flowers, once plucked, were dried in the sun and then ground to fine dust. The powdered dust once mixed in water gave way to the most brilliant hue of The pigment and colored powdered talc called aabir were the mainstays at Holi festival celebrations, long before the manufactured colors of today.
Jamshedpur is the largest city in the state of Jharkhand. It was named after the industrialist Jamshetji Tata and is home to such industrial giants as Tata Steel and Tata Motors. Jamshedpur is one of the Industrial Cities of India, being known by many simply as The Steel City.
Jamshedpur was ranked as the cleanest city of India in 2020 by Swach Survekshan in 2020. Jamshedpur ranked as the 15th cleanest city in India by Swachh Survekshan in 2019 and was 7th cleanest city of India in 2010. The city is also ranked as 2nd in India in terms of Quality of Life.
During our virtual tour the guide was a passenger on a motorcycle, dodging cars, cows and pedestrians along the way.
Due to Covid restrictions people are celebrating at home this year but we were able to find some children celebrating and having fun.
