Coloring India - ISKCON Chowpatty celebrated Holi festival in a grand way

6th March 2015 

This festival of colors, Holi, is being celebrated all over India since ancient times.  And celebration for devotees means another chance to offer a service to Radha Krishna. Thus at Radha Gopinath temple we play this festival with dry natural colors and colored water by smearing them at our Radha Gopijanavallabha Deities.

At Radha Gopinath temple we celebrate this festival the very next day of Gaur Poornima (appearance day of Lord Chaitanya). Like Every year today happens to be the day when we celebrated the color festival. In the morning we started the preparation and by evening everyone was eagerly waiting for entry of little decorated deities with colorful clothes and flower jewelry. Finally, deities arrived with a Kirtan party and everyone bows down to welcome them. They are placed on the alter and dozens of plates filled with natural colors are placed in front of them. This time we also had HH Radhanath Swami Maharaj who joined us in this festivals of Color.

HH Radhanath Swami begin the celebration when he came ahead and started smearing colors from a distance with the help of a brush. Every stroke of colors that falls on them is accompanied by a loud Hari Bol from all the devotees. One by one the guests come ahead and smear the Lords with different colors. The Kirtan starts intensifying and reached another level, and when fragrant colored water buckets arrived with water cannons, Kirtan becomes thunderous. Once again devotees pick up water cannons and soak deities. It’s a heavenly pleasure to watch deities’ enjoying colors. It appears as if they are melting in different colors one after another.

It is believed that tradition of playing with colors on this day draws its roots from the pastime of Radha and Krishna. Once young and dark complexioned Krishna who was jealous of Radha’s fair complexion questioned his mother Yashoda on the darkness of his complexion. Yashoda, teasingly asked him to color Radha’s face in colors of his choice. In a mischievous mood, Krishna applied color on Radha’s face. We can’t imitate this mood but devotees also participate in this loving exchange of applying colors and express love for each other.

For Short Video in Youtube ClickHere

For Entire Photo Album of Holi Festival in Facebook Click below Facebook link

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152782363743226.1073742178.54260993225&type=1

For Entire Photo Album of Holi Festival in www.iskcondesiretree.com Click below Link

http://www.iskcondesiretree.com/photo/albums/holi-celebration-with-small-deities-radha-gopijana-vallabha-at

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