Holi Hurrddunnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggg!!!

Man, what a day...I was pink and silver and green and yellow and orange and gold and any other color you can think of as available in gulal. For a day unplanned as it was, it was FUN!

I woke up with hopes of a lazy day that was to be spent cooking and painting...yeah...some days I like to be good and do all these things...these are days when i don't have any money to go shopping and the credit card is screaming because of the burden of debt on it. I started painting, did some 5% of what I was actually supposed to do and went down for some chow. And my SIL dropped the balloon....oops, bomb. We were all going to my cousin's to play holi.

So I got into my gear...capris, a crew tee and flip-flops, sunglasses prettily perched on my head. Of course I was going to play the sophisticated holi with only a tika of gulal on my forehead and maybe a little on my cheeks.

And of course, all sophistication flew out of the window the minute I saw my bro-in-law (BIL). Screaming like the banshees we truly are at heart, we ran towards each other and a split second later, I was a multi hued citizen of the world!

And then we went to another cousin's house...a sis who's expecting and who pronounced over the phone that she and her husband's family were not doing the holi thing. What we saw when we reached there was a different story altogether.

At one point I had both my BILs on either side of me...they couldn't between the two of them decide whether they wanted me to be gold-skinned or silver. One was diligently rubbing gold paint into my arms, the other silver...

One BILs father was standing in a corner and chanting, "we're only playing dry holi"...and he had a hose pipe spewing water like a fire-fighter at all of us!

Guess the only thing that I missed in the entire day was bhaang! All because I have boring BILs who thought that vicious bhaang would kick their darling Shaluu in the head. Little do they know how much their darling SIL can hold!

Anyway. Look out for the pics in this space.

In the meanwhile, all you lucky people who got to partake of Lord Shiva's nectar...Jai Shambu!!

I have a monastry named after me!...or hang on, should I say I'm named after a Tibetan monastery? (Don't believe me? Check THIS: http://www.asianart.com/shalu/shalu/index.html)

How many of us really give thought to what's the meaning behind our name? Hindu mythology, somewhere - don't ask me to pinpoint the exact location - says that our names help define us. By virtue of that, I should be a peaceful quiet person. Can't quite imagine a Tibetan monsatery filled with cacophony or resounding with laughter...qualities VERY stongly associated with me.

So, the few people I know in the blogging world, I'm tagging you. Find out more about your name, tell me what it means and how far or near are you to the meaning of your name.

Some rules:

1. You've got to tag at least 4 people, who then tag 4 more.
2. Each of these 4 people MUST come back and leave a comment on this blog.

P.S. The second one is because I need to know more blog-happy people, for God's sake!

Rupen, Charu, Divya and Mala. You have been tagged.