Even before leaves sprouted or flowers bloomed, the vibrant seasonal hues of green, lavender and blue sparkled in the sun Saturday for the annual Festival of Colors along the Naperville Riverwalk.
As part of Holi, an annual Hindu tradition of welcoming spring, hundreds of people playfully tossed colored powder on family, friends and strangers in the large grassy area around the Riverwalk’s Grand Pavilion.
“It’s unique for a community to do this type of stuff, taking a Hindu festival and creating something everyone can share,” said Brian Shah, of Skokie, who brought his 7-year-old son, Rohan, and wife, Nilam. Holi is celebrated on a mass scale in India, Nilam Shah said, and marks a time to “just be happy and with family and appreciating the good.”
Festival goers lined up to buy tickets for drinks, vegetarian food and dyed flour, which coated participants’ clothes, hands, faces and hair with a rainbow of colors.
“It’s fun, like a color run without running,” laughed Maria Markowski, just before throwing pink powder all over friend and fellow North Central College student Sara Monteleone. The women said they were pleasantly surprised to learn the spreading of colors was available to anyone who paid $2 for a bag of tinted flour, enabling them “to have a war with each other.”
“And we did,” Markowski added.
The Vedic Cultural Society says the Hindu tradition encourages people to throw their worries to the wind and promote friendship by using the occasion to cast away grudges and forgive.
“In Naperville, people didn’t know what this is all about,” event organizer Naveen Sharma said. He’s thrilled that more than half the people attending the festival every year are not from India, he said.
The entertainment included traditional Indian music as well as live rock and pop from Timing Is Everything, which added to the energetic vibe. At noon, the band counted down to a mass throw, resulting in a cloud of colored powder over the crowd that elicited shrieks of delight.
“These kinds of festivals, we miss them a lot,” said Kush Thapar, a student from India who is attending DePaul University in Chicago.
Nilam Shah agreed, saying “it’s crazier in India. They have bonfires everywhere.” She said she is glad the Naperville group celebrates Holi in early April, two to eight weeks later than it is normally done in India. Shah said she came to the Chicago area when she was 6 years old and celebrated Holi with her family growing up, “when it’s too cold to enjoy it. This is nice because it’s warmer.”
Based on the weather and early turnout, Sharma said he expected this year’s fundraiser to draw 4,500 people, the largest crowd in its eight-year history. He said that would exceed the record in 2015, when the festival drew 3,200 and raised $12,000 for Simply Vedic, a nonprofit founded in 2006 to promote cross-cultural engagement and education.
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The annual festival features opportunities to learn about the Vedic culture at sponsored booths selling henna tattoos, clothes and artwork as well as those promoting yoga, karate, health, fitness, business services and a new Hindu temple to teach “the philosophy of Krishna consciousness, which is peace and love,” Vedic community member Shyam Kumar said.
The local community is spending $4 million to build Naperville’s first traditional Hindu temple, an ornate structure with a dome that will be visible from Interstate 88, Kumar said. Hinduism is part of the Vedic religion, he said, and the temple will offer services for worshipers from the local International Society of Krishna Consciousness, also known as Hare Krishnas, who currently gather at a small former church on McDowell Road, the site of the new temple.
Diane Moca is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.