The Sanskriti Association of Indian Students at San Diego State celebrated the annual Holi festival Saturday at the Language Academy Elementary School field on March 18.
Holi is a festival that celebrates love and tries to bring people together from all different backgrounds to celebrate friendship, said Byju Joy, president of Sanskriti.
Information systems graduate student Ankita Chaturvedi said people play with water and dry colors at the festival, and the goal is to put as much color as possible on people.
Sanskriti gave out dry colors to everyone that attended, served Indian food and had a DJ playing Indian music.
DJ Harshel is a former president of Sankriti at SDSU, and offered to play at the Holi celebration because he continues to stay in contact with the organization.
Shayla Patel, a public health freshman said it was her first time at a Holi festival and that it was fun.
Sanskriti officers and members sang and danced to the music while painting others with colors.
The event was open to SDSU students and the San Diego community to attend and spray one another in colors.
“It’s really cool that even people who are not Indian came,” Patel said.
Attendees included the International Mentor Program Coordinator Alison Peppers, students from the Saudi Students Club and former president of Sanskriti, Amrutesh Vyas.
“This is the kind of thing you work for in our club and when you see others experiencing your culture and love it, it’s a really good feeling,” Chaturvedi said.
Sanskriti served samosas for lunch, which is a traditional Indian potato dish that is served with two Indian sauces.
This year, Sanskriti had a group of 16 volunteers who organized Holi due to the large volume of people who attended and in preparation of the event.
“We got an overwhelming response from international students and it keeps getting bigger and bigger every year,” Joy said.
Chaturvedi said the process of putting an event together with Sanskriti is “awesome because it is important to not only enjoy the event, but also the preparation leading up to it.”
Joy said that students and the community are starting to learn more about each other’s cultures through events like Holi.
“In India, on the day of Holi everything is colorful and we all play in the streets with each other by throwing colors and spraying water,” Chaturvedi said, “There was even a time where I threw someone in the mud.”
The organization is also hosting an international coffee hour on April 7 at the International Student Center.
