The Gujarati Society of Southern California (GSSC)
Youth Chapter organized their inaugural Holi festival, Holi Hai 2019, on March
24th at Whittier Narrows Recreation Park in South El Monte. Holi is commonly
known as the festival of colors or festival of love, originating from India.
This festival signifies the arrival of Spring after a long winter. This
festival symbolizes the blossoming of love and gives us a reason to laugh and
play with each other. In fact, that’s how this festival originated - to
use powder colors as a form of play and enjoyment with bare means.
The celebration kicked off at noon with DJ Pratik from
Fusion Sounds playing Holi classics from Bollywood. With over 600
pre-registrations and 200 walk-ins, this festival saw huge interest not only
within the Indian diaspora but from all cultures. This theme of diversity was
reflected in the cuisines that were offered during the festival. Food vendor
Spice Bites served a fusion of Indian and Mexican cuisine — with Indian style
tater tots and tacos being their most popular dishes. Biryani Factory offered
their popular Vegetable Biryani, Samosa, and Gobi Manchurian. The cuisines were
so popular that they sold out!
The first 500 tickets received our Holi Hai! t-shirt
designed by volunteer Jessica Khetani at JSK Designs. We are extremely grateful
to our grand sponsor, Venus Group for their in-kind contribution of the
t-shirts. With timed color throws at the top of every hour, participants had the
opportunity to celebrate and party together. DJ Krishan fueled the fun with
regular showers of colored water on to our participants.
To add to the entertainment, GSSC included a raffle
drawing for two sets of two tickets each to the Arijit Singh concert on April
7th. The organizers for Arijit Singh were a sponsor for the Holi Hai festival.
Our list of vendors also included Farm Fresh To You, a delivery service for
100% certified-organic produce and hand-crafted farm products directly from
local farmers and artisans. Naresh Bhakta from All4Lodging, also one of our
sponsors, interviewed a guest who attended the festival. She said: “I had no plans
to attend the event when I woke up this morning. And found the best
entertainment at the park accidentally.”
We are extremely grateful to our grand sponsors,
Fusion Sounds and Venus Group for their contribution to our celebration. Thank
you to additional sponsors All4Lodging, Farm Fresh To You and the organizers of
the Arijit Singh concert. Lastly, and more importantly, thank you to all the
volunteers, whose contributions were responsible for the success of this
festival.
GSSC’s next event,
on Saturday, April 6, is the screening of Gujarati movie, Oxygen, which is back
by popular demand. Our last showing was sold out and this one is on course to
be sold out as well.