Holi at Aptara

When you think Holi you think of bright colors, colored faces, people intoxicated in colors and yes bhang, sometimes even bordering into hooliganism. You think about unknown entities pelting water balloons (not something that's good). You think twice before you step out of your house afraid of being colored, especially if your wearing white.

But on Tuesday the 10th of March the people at Aptara, Pune, found a different way to bring in Holi. It did involve colors, but in a good way. You did have people with colored faces, but it was all in the fun of the event. Each bay in the company was assigned a color. The bay had to come up a way to decorate their bay using the color assigned to them. So you had the blues, reds, greens, oranges, yellows, and the purples.

What started initially with just a couple of groups enthusiastically decorating their bays, slowly caught on through the entire office. Everywhere you had people working with chart paper and kite paper, cellophane paper and paints and brushes, glues and newspapers, sticks and strings, lights and laces, heart shaped balloons and green ferns, and of course colors. You had themes that ranged from social messages to religion to some just decorating their bay to make it look nice.

Greens were used to obviously depict messages to save the Earth and yes money, but then you also had them depict envy (using a cool looking mosaic devil) and shamrocks. Blue was used to create an out of the world theme, space and robots. Those who got yellow used it to depict road signs and yellow pages and help desks. Purple was used to create a gigantic, cool looking spider web, and a decoration using the poetry 'Madhushala' as its central theme. The reds were used to depict love and blood donations. Yes the orange was used as usual to create a religious, phalki.

Everywhere you looked you could just see colors (this could also be due to the fact all the lights were colored paper). You had people visiting areas they hadn't been to before, admiring the decorations and clicking photographs. When the judges came around they were not spared with the colors. The judges were even bribed with fake notes.

At the end of the day you had the orange Phalki group and the red Blood Donation group, taking the 1st and 2nd place respectively. You had various other prices like best wall hanging, best message, best wallpaper, etc. All in all it was fun and colorful way of celebrating the festival. But I am afraid to say there was very little work done. But then all work and no play makes Aptara a dull place. So eagerly waiting for the next Holi to come around.