It's a Colorful Life

Every spring the sprawling lawn in front of the Sri Sri Radha Krishna temple is blanketed in bright greens, reds, purples, yellows, pinks and blues.

Thousands of over-eager teenagers and college students, most of whom have no idea what the festival is even for, gather in droves and wedge themselves into the crowds to enjoy a brief, thrillingly terrifying moment of blind, intoxicating asphyxiation.

Once again I made my way to the onion domes of Spanish Fork, visited with the llamas and shelled out my wages for a selection of fancy chalk,

Once again I smiled and swayed to the beat of the dancers who swirled and sang with the chime of the kartals,

Once again I found myself packed in with the varied array of human beings who had traveled from miles around to watch or personally experience the rainbow of dust as it was flung into the March sky,

And when it was all over,

Once again I joined the colorful exodus of young people as they wound their ways from the Lotus temple, on to their dust coated cars and ordinary lives that they will, hopefully, make a little more colorful

in their own ways.