10,000 Attend California Holi Festival
MILPITAS, CALIFORNIA, March 11, 2015 (Mercury News): An estimated 10,000 Indian-Americans from all over the Bay Area congregated Saturday at Cardoza Park in Milpitas to celebrate the start of spring with the Festival of Colors, Holi. The free festival, organized by the Federation of Indo-Americans of Northern California and Fremont Hindu Temple to celebrate Holi, drew in families, devotees and community members throwing colorful powders on one another to the thumping beat of live music.
The festival, which has traditionally been held at Hindu temples in the area, was held for the first time in a park, as organizers expect to see attendance to continue to grow. “Usually we do it in the temple and it was just getting overcrowded. We thought we should move it to an open area and … we want to open it up to a lot of other communities to start participating … we want to share some our traditional culture with everybody else around in the community,” said Dr. Romesh Japra, president of the Federation of Indo-Americans.
Japra said attendees really got into the swing of the event, dancing to fast-paced Bollywood music as color were thrown by children, elders and adults. “There was a lot of food, music, dancing and colors,” Japra said. Japra said the story of Holi is one of goodness triumphing over evil, and that the festival is a celebration of love, truth, faith and being a good person.
