EPISODE FOUR - HOLI FESTIVAL Each year the most colourful festival in the world comes to Waitakere as the local Fijian Indian community invites the city to share in the excitement. The Hindu Holi festival is an explosion of fun and hilarity as festival-goers cover each other in bright coloured powder and water. Anyone and everyone is fair game, friend or stranger, rich or poor, man or woman, children and elders! Being immersed in a vibrant cloud of colour makes us all equal and one with god. For the festival organizing committee, made up of members of The Waitakere Indian Association, it’s a busy week juggling work commitments, organizing duties as well as the religious commitments that accompany the festival. Organiser Anilesh Kumar is particularly busy with a last minute publicity drive, and the all-important job of ordering the colours. Last year the festival ran out of the symbolic coloured powder so Anilesh is taking no chances this year and has plans to order up large! The revelry is not just limited to the throwing of colours, and a number of groups are preparing to have their fun on stage as part of the Holi Festival dance programme. Dance instructors Preeya Prakash and Monisha Kumar have both created dances celebrating their love of Holi and have been working round the clock to perfect the dances with their eager students.

• published: 20 Aug 2014
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