Holi festival, Hindu spring celebration, brings playful fun to Windsor

It was not a normal Saturday afternoon at the Windsor Town Green, where friends and family members chased one another around the lawn, affectionately dousing each other with red, orange, blue, purple and green powder.

What’s not to like about Sonoma County’s own Holi festival?

Preschool-aged children gathered in groups of four or five, dipped their tiny hands into packets of colored powder and took turns tossing it at others, as teens and adults of all ages danced to Bollywood music.

“It represents all the colors of spring,” said Vipul Sheth, former head of the North Bay Indo-American Association, the nonprofit group that organized the event.

Known as the Festival of Colors, Holi is a Hindu celebration marking the arrival of spring and celebrating love and the triumph of good over evil.

It was the fifth year the association has organized a Holi event in Sonoma County and the first time it was held in Windsor. Previous Holi events were held at Santa Rosa’s Finley Community Center, but that venue was booked this year.

The festival traditionally also involves throwing colored water at other participants, but event organizers - to the relief of many a photographer - said they didn’t get permission from the city to use water.

“In India, it gets really nasty,” said Sudhir Kumar Dhiman of Santa Rosa, a member of the association.

Dhiman said sometimes loved ones square off in mini-battles spraying with colored water and swinging water-soaked cloth at each other.

Dhiman, who came to the United States in 1997, said the festival is a loving reminder ?of his hometown, Panipat, a historic city north of New Delhi. ?He said that when he first arrived in America he lived in South Dakota and after a year or two he and his family wanted to return.

But over the years, as more Indians came to the United States, familiar communities began to take root, maintaining traditions from their homeland.

“Now you can enjoy the festivals and food and you don’t miss being in India so much,” said Kumar, senior vice president of technology at The Wine Group.

The festival is celebrated in slightly different ways throughout India and is most popular in northern and western India, It has its roots in Hindu mythology, partly as a celebration of good versus evil.

At the Town Green event, one festivalgoer said that in India, people make bonfires the night before the festival and throw into the flames symbolic tokens such as seeds, rice or bits of cow dung formed into small shapes that are supposed to represent some bad personal quality, such as anger, jealousy or selfishness.

The event Saturday drew about 100 people.

Paul Pavlak of Sebastopol said it was his second time attending a Holi festival. Pavlak said his daughter goes to school with some kids who are Indian and their parents invited his family to attend the festival last year. This year, he said, no one had to ask him.

“Now it’s on the calendar,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @renofish.