Tweet21-03-2011 om 09:42 by Sueli Brodin

"Bring your three lovelies, there will be a game of colours and it'll be fun for them!" my friend Catalina wrote to me when she invited me and my family to attend the Hindu Holi Festival she had been helping the Indian Students Association at Maastricht University (ISAM) to organise this year in Maastricht.





The Holi Festival is an immensely popular feast of colours, celebrated by millions of Indians across the globe to welcome the arrival of spring.



Holi is celebrated at the end of the winter season on the last full moon day of the lunar month, which fell this year on March 19. The group of Indian students in Maastricht started preparing for the festival two weeks in advance, gathering ingredients for a traditional lunch and the special coloured powders for the joyful game of colours they had planned to play later in the afternoon.




After taking our shoes off, we sat on the floor where placemats and plates made of banana leaves were lined up for us. We were told to first sprinkle a little bit of water on our plate and to clean it softly. My children enjoyed the procedure very much.



A special guest of the event was Mr Dr VG Kumar, the executive director of the Maastricht Education & Research Centre in Bangalore, India, who was visiting Maastricht.



The students had been busy in the kitchen of Tafelstraat 13 since early in the morning and said they had enjoyed cooking together, because it had brought them even closer to one another.



On the menu:

If only pictures could convey the wonderful aroma of all the herbs and spices in the kitchen!



My family and I watched fascinated as all the tasty-looking dishes and sauces were served on our banana leaves.



The students told me that they didn't have to look up the recipes in any cookbook: "Our mothers always make these dishes during festivities and we've been helping them since childhood, so we all know how to prepare them!"



After a friendly word of welcome by the President of the Indian Students Association and an explanation of the religious significance of the Holi festival, we were invited to enjoy our meal. "Eet smakelijk!" everyone said in Dutch and when I asked if there was an equivalent expression in Hindi, the Indian students answered laughing: "No no, just eat..."



The lunch was absolutely delicious, maybe even more so because we ate with our hands and tasted the food directly. I also enjoyed listening to the Bollywood music playing in the background behind the lively chatter and forgot for a while that I was in the Netherlands.



My children loved the sweets made of condensed milk we were served for dessert and I learned that they could be found in Aachen.



As for the powders needed for the game of colours, the students had discovered them in Antwerp. After lunch, we were told to pick up a bag of coloured powders and to gather outside on a small square off Tafelstraat.



That's when the fun started. All of a sudden, everyone started running around and painting each other's faces in blue, yellow, pink, green and purple.



My children happily joined in...!





All we could hear in the square were sounds of joyous cries and laughter and before long, our faces, hands, hair, clothes and shoes were covered in all the lively colours of the Holi Festival.





I was very touched to see how much the Indian students enjoyed my children's presence. They played with them and many asked to be photographed with them.



It was as if my children gave them a sense of family, something they perhaps miss here a little...



We played for a long time, until we all turned purple.



As for my little Sacha, I saw that she had kept two bags of coloured powders unopened and when I asked her why, she said with a mischievous smile: "Can I take them to school on Monday?"

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