See the rainbow. Taste the rainbow. Throw the rainbow?
On Saturday, Redmond was home to the first-ever Festival of Color at the city’s Downtown Park. The sun-kissed afternoon featured live music, a vegetable cuisine and a cloud of cotton-drenching colors.
Event vendors served a multi-cultural crowd with fried pastries, seasoned fries and vegetable fritters as rock music rang free in the park.
At around 1 p.m., family and friends tossed shades of the rainbow — colored powder and water — on each other to celebrate Holi, a springtime festivity in India.
The Vedic Cultural Center, a spiritual center in Sammamish, hosted the event, which drew more than 1,000 people.
“The Festival of Color is a sacred festival that has been held for thousands of years. People pray for each other and celebrate that through a playful toss of color,” said Balarama Lila Das, an educator with Vedic University at the Vedic Cultural Center.
The Festival of Color promoted community-bridging values, which are noted on its website; this festival treats everybody equally — all differences dissolve in the colors that flow in plenty.
Volunteers with the Vedic Cultural Center staffed the Festival of Color to promote a culture of service, according to Lila Das.
“Everybody is smiling,” Lila Das added. “We want to promote selfless service.”
In consideration of how we voice our opinions in the modern world, we’ve closed comments on our websites. We value the opinions of our readers and we encourage you to keep the conversation going.
Please feel free to share your story tips by emailing editor@redmond-reporter.com.
To share your opinion for publication, submit a letter through our website https://www.redmond-reporter.com/submit-letter/. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. (We’ll only publish your name and hometown.) We reserve the right to edit letters, but if you keep yours to 300 words or less, we won’t ask you to shorten it.
