Holi!

It's Holi! The holiday where we celebrate the miraculous escape of young Prahlad from certain doom in Hiranyakashipu's murderous bonfire by throwing water balloons and buckets of water and colored powder at each other why not! For over a week little kids have been throwing water at buses and female tourists while the papers say that police have been confiscating illegally smuggled caches of water balloons. This has to be the greatest idea for a holiday ever.  

In the village the only colors available were red from tikka and black from ash.

We traveled around with a gang of water balloon-wielding hooligans, occasionally encountering other gangs of water balloon-wielding hooligans.

From every rooftop awaited snipers with water balloons and buckets of water. 

Outside my school in Bistagaon.

We were attacked by people wielding yellow, green, and blue tikka on the road to Chapagaon.

My mother was visiting. She brought cascarones, confetti-filled egg shells that Texans smash over each other's heads during Easter. I'm not sure how widespread the practice is in the US, but I think it originated in Mexico. She also made some really good cheese enchiladas. A pretty good representation of Texan culture I thought. The cascarones were very well received during Holi.

This child, however, was not amused.