Students gather in a crowd in the center of the field. All of a sudden, a countdown starts. Three, two, one. Handfuls of color explode in the air. Cheering erupts. Students dance and sing with one another as they celebrate the festival of Holi.
This festival of color, which involves throwing colored powder at friends, was hosted by the Telugu Students Federation alongside 11 other Indian-based student organizations on the multipurpose fields on Feb. 28. The event also featured two DJs, dance performances and food vendors.
“I think [Holi] is a really fun festival to honor the fact we’re entering a new season and just new beginnings, new happiness, all of that,” accounting junior Samata Dintakurti said.
Over 1,100 students and community members attended the festival, a record number for TSF. Dintakurti shares why she thinks people were drawn to this kind of event.
“This is a way to pause your life outside of this. All the hardships, all the stresses, just keep it to the side. Come out here, enjoy with your friends.”
For many, this was a reason to be mischievous, to do something new that they usually wouldn’t do with their friends and to spread their culture with others.
“[When I play Holi], I feel like I’m spreading my love, my culture and my religion as well as introducing all my friends to where I come from,” neuroscience senior Vedika Panchal said. “This is one of my favorite holidays to celebrate with everyone I love.”
Another aspect of this was that it allowed students to bring together new people that otherwise have never experienced this before and see a new side of them. Rekhahnjali Das, an MSITM student, mentions how she has seen Holi played out in different ways in different states across India. She finds it fascinating to see how different people play. She also finds it cool to share with her friends.
“I have friends from different parts of India and even from America, and I’m introducing them to the festival of Holi,” Das said. “Holi is a festival of colors, and colors are something that gives excitement in your life.”
Event volunteer Adnan Shahriar, a computer science master’s student, noticed a similar atmosphere around the people participating.
“You see all the people coming together [to get packets of color] and no one really knows anyone, but they’re still having fun, and there are no social boundaries. Everyone is just being themselves, having a good time,” Shahriar said.
The event attracted all kinds of people from UTD and the surrounding area, bringing them together to celebrate the holiday with dancing, singing, food and color fights.
Many international students, like Tharini Kalidindi, a computer information systems and technology senior, expressed how they found the event to be a way to bring them back to memories of playing Holi in India.
“I believe [this] festival keeps us close to our roots, especially as an international student coming from India,” Kalidindi said. “This is a way I can connect back to what I was, and it gives me a lot of childhood memories.”
The event also attracted UTD alumni, including Jash Parekh, who reminisced on his experience.
“UTD is always going to be a big part of my life, and it’s just a bit of nostalgia seeing everyone here,” Parekh said. “It feels great to come with my friends. I’m meeting everyone after like a couple years, so it’s a great feeling.”
Beyond attendees, the event featured sponsors that advertised their products and sold food. For the newly opened ice cream shop, Kelvin Scale, the event was a way to promote their new ice cream store to UTD students. They were excited to see the colors and public interest at the event.
Chetan Anuganti, president of TSF, expressed his surprise at the increase in student attendees this year, as well as the importance of this event for the organization and the work that went into putting this together. He said this is their third time hosting Holi.
“[We were] mesmerized a little by the crowd,” Anuganti said. “We thought there might be a thousand [people], so it was good to see more than that. It’s good that people came and had fun.”
Anuganti shares how, in the future, he said he hopes to see the South Asian clubs collaborate more for events like this, and he also wishes that, in the future, more kinds of clubs would be interested in joining this event and leading initiatives like these.
“It’s good to see that once a year all the clubs come together and spread awareness about unity,” he said. “There’s no politics between clubs, no one club is less or more and all the clubs are together.”
