Posts Tagged ‘paint’

Holi: Festival of Color

Sunday, April 14th, 2013

The holiday  Holi was a couple of weeks ago but this weekend at University of California, Berkeley the Indian Student Association put on a festival for Holi. Many people have heard of these festivals of color where people by colored powder and in a giant mosh pit of people everyone throws color at each other.

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A giant throng of people gathers and takes part in this festival each year; this is my second year taking part and it really is an amazing thing to experience. You can find last year’s story of Holi here

At times there are so many people crammed into one space it is hard to breathe, impossible to see if you are as short as me, and in the mist of color filling the air there are shouts of joy and surprise as color explodes across people’s hair, face and bodies in a huge spray of vibrant color.

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A big group of my friends all came to the festival and we all stuck together in the massive crowd, dancing, screaming and throwing color at each other. It really is an experience everyone should have at some point in their life at least once.

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Our faces were covered in a huge array of colors, it felt like every part of me had been dyed a different color.

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After the war of color is over, everyone looks so different with a mask of colors changing the features of faces that are so familiar yet entirely altered.

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I can’t wait for the years to come where we can celebrate again and again the vibrancy of our lives and the world.

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Paint Balling

Friday, November 12th, 2010

For my friends seventeenth birthday we went paint balling at a paintball course oer the hill. I had never done this before but it was loads of fun. It had been pouring so the course was totally muddy and I was slipping everywhere as we were running around trying not to get shot. We were on the Jeep course which had a bunch of playground pieces and a Jeep in the center of the course. We were divided up into teams and had to get ready for the fight.

Clara was my main paintball buddy, we stuck together the entire time. Back to back dominating the paintball field. There were basically three groups of people on our course,

  1. our group, composed of four girls who had never paint balled before. In other terms, Noobs
  2. the child’s birthday group, a pack of young boys and their dad who have played many times before and know the entire course
  3. the hard-core group, four adult guys who own at paint balling and kill everyone else on the course.

The teams wound up being half of our group plus the children’s group against the other half of our group with the hardcore group.

It is pretty exciting when you realize you got someone out. At one point I was having a little war with someone on the other team. They were hiding behind a stack of tires on one side of the field and I was hiding behind a different structure. They kept popping up and shooting at me. After a long time of nothing I finally hit them on the top of the head with an explosion of yellow paint all over their hair. I noticed that they had blonde hair and I wanted to see who I had hit when the round was over. AS I was leaving the field and searching for the mysterious blonde who I had defeated I realized it was my friend’s mom who had taken us here. I felt so bad for hitting her on the head and eventually told her it was me but it all turned out ok. I had to watch my butt though because I feared her vengeance for the rest of the day xD

Between running and hiding behind various structures and shooting at the other team I got shot three times in total. Once in the arm, one in the chest, and once on the back of my leg. I got surprised by an ambush attack and got the hits to my arm and chest which I still have a welt from today. It is more shocking than painful when you get hit.

The last shot I got was during the very ast round. The hardcore group decided that they could take the rest  of the people playing. So new teams of everybody versus the hardcore group. Somehow they actually won the round. Clara and I were one of the last ones out of the game. Finally they snuck up behind me and yelled surrender. Before I could even turn around he shot me at close range right on the back of my thigh. It hurt a lot and I was really pissed because when you yell surrender you are supposed to not shoot them because you are so close. Later when talking to Clara we realized that when he yelled surrender she shot at him so instead of shooting her he decided to shoot me.

It was really fun, even though I was shot several times I really enjoyed the experience. It is really thrilling to run around shooting people without having to worry about really hurting someone. I hope to do it again sometime.

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Paint Drops

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Let the paint drip
Let it dry
Ignore it
Walk on it
Refuse its existence
Deny it the life
It was owed
Yes
It is just that easy

One day you will find yourself
And stop
You stand on hollowed ground
Where just a single
Red drops stands
Old and worn
It still remains
Hidden but present
In a cement jungle
Of cross-hatched lies

You will stand there
And look at that single drop
And wonder
How could I have let this pass
How could I have let
These things go so unnoticed
Reflected at you
In a single drop
Are your mistakes

They never really go away do they
They leave behind a mark
A remembrance
Of the deeds your soul
Has withered from
So bend down
Put that red stain
In the center of your palm
And understand

Feel the cold harshness
Of the unyielding ground
Feel that mark
Feel that scar on you
On the world
And remember
Always remember
That it exists
Because of your follies
Never forget that

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