About 1,400 UF students danced to pop as they threw a rainbow of colored cornstarch into the air and onto their classmates.
The explosion of color momentarily blocked out the sun Saturday afternoon, creating clouds of red, pink, yellow, orange and blue. Students shrieked as friends and strangers smeared the powder on one another’s faces.
The Indian Student Association hosted its third annual UF Holi festival on Hume Field to celebrate the coming of spring.
Anjelika Chatwal, the festival’s director, said the event serves to foster diversity because participants can’t see the people they’re coloring with powder.
“When you have the colored powder on your face, you don’t know who the next person is,” said Chatwal, a UF behavioral and cognitive neuroscience sophomore. “You’re going to be running around in this field and just putting powder on anyone, without knowing who they are.”
Dominique Lindsey-Gonzalez, a 19-year-old UF sustainability junior, dances during the UF Holi Festival of Colors on Hume Field on Saturday.
The festival costs about $5,000 to $6,000, which was given to ISA through sponsors and Student Government, Chatwal, 20, said.
Part of the cost is for the free T-shirts passed out during the event. The shirts are an important part of the festival because not everyone knows to wear white in order to best highlight the colors, Chatwal said.
This year the celebration featured a DJ and sound system — an addition that made the traditional event “more fun, engaging and interactive.”
Although Holi was celebrated March 6 in India, that date was during Spring Break, Chatwal said.
Holi is about putting the past in the past and starting anew with the changing season, said Neha Swaroop, a UF finance senior and Holi volunteer.
The 21-year-old said her favorite part of the festival is “being able to go up to a stranger or a friend and say ‘Happy Holi’ and put colors on them.”
Swaroop said she has attended Holi celebrations with her family since she was a child.
“I used to do it at home, and now I can do it here, too.”
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 3/30/2015 under the headline “UF’s Holi festival celebrates spring, diversity with color”]
Kinjal Jain, a 21-year-old UF computer science junior, is lifted up by other participants at the UF Holi Festival of Colors on Hume Field on Saturday.
