Bright hues of orange, pink, and green swirled through the air, mixing with the early afternoon light, immersing students in the colorful festivities of Holi. On March 4, the Bishop’s community came together to celebrate Holi, an annual Hindu festival dedicated to colors, which welcomes the arrival of spring.The event, a collaboration between Bishop’s DEIJ program, Global Education Initiative (GEI) program, and parent volunteers, came in two parts. During middle and upper school lunch, numerous parent volunteers, such as Ms. Sandyha Sur, mother to Mirir Sur (‘31), and Ms. Rachna Agarwalla, mother to Sanjeevni (‘28) and Leela Vaidya (‘31), helped set up traditional South Asian music and a large table, decorated with ornate cloths and signs about Holi’s history, on the Rohr Terrace. They guided students through numerous Holi traditions. At the same time, students stopped by booths to try cups of mango lassi and handfuls of fryums.
During office hours, a color celebration invited all attendees into a ring in the center of the quad. Volunteers handed kids tubes and packets of brightly-colored powders. Once the celebration started, participants sprinted around the ring freely, hurling them at each other, spraying vibrant hues everywhere. By the end of the event, everyone was covered in all kinds of dyes.
Associate Director of DEIJ Ms. Sarah Collamer was a key organizer of the Holi celebration, which she described as a “festival of unity, togetherness, love.” She explained that, although Holi has been celebrated at Bishop’s for three years now, this is the first time so many activities have been organized, such as the color celebration after school.
Through the activities, students, teachers, and parents experienced Holi in all kinds of ways, from sampling traditional foods to chasing their friends with pink powder. Director of Global Education Dr. David Moseley said, “It’s a joyous, riotous celebration of the arrival of spring,” emphasizing that it was wonderful to be able to recognize such a meaningful part of South Asian Hindu heritage. In the past, Dr. Moseley had led multiple Bishop’s trips to India where he had experienced Holi in person, and appreciated “that we were able to bring a little bit of Holi to our campus.”
“Holi is unique because its entire purpose is to break down the walls that divide us,” said Ms. Sur. She expressed her gratitude towards the DEIJ and Global Education programs, calling the event a “beautiful reminder” of our united community.
“This has been a really beautiful partnership between Global Education and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and Justice,” concluded Ms. Collamer. She hopes that, in the near future, joint events will become more common as members of the Bishop’s community.
All these activities came together with one goal: to educate the community about DEIJ in an accessible way, so that members would “walk away with a deeper understanding of Holi and the traditions it comes from, while also feeling a sense of connection to one another through shared experiences,” as Ms. Collamer puts it. She added that, especially “right now,” that “for us to be reminded that we are one strong community, and that we can embrace a next chapter together alongside each other, feels very important for us as a school community.”
Considering the laughter of students as they finally stepped out of the ring and the shirts streaked with the colors of Holi, it is safe to say that this goal was achieved.
