Holi is the festival of colour, celebrated with much fervor and religiosity at the onset of spring in India. In the villages of Mathura and Vrindivan, in Western Uttar Pradesh, which is the birthplace of Lord Krishna, celebrations begin a week before. Temples are reverberating with the sonorous hymns of Lord Krishna love for the Gopi’s (cowherd maids), the lanes filled with the joyful enthusiasm of the people and the air decorated with ribbons of rainbow colours.
Lately the widows of Vrindivan – who were living as a social outcast (after the demise of their husbands)- have broken free from the hundred year old tradition of renouncing all forms of colors; thus soaking and immersing into the spirit of the festival and its colours.