holi

Poor Phet. Finally there's a holiday just for him: no gift-buying, no need to shave or dress up, no chocolate eggs to hide, just a bunch of water guns, coloured powders, and beverages laced with bhaang. Actually, lots of things laced with bhaang. Probably even peoples' shoes. Anyways, poor Phet: he missed the holi shebang. He had to jet off to Sri Lanka at 6 am and didn't get to douse a single unsuspecting passer-by with a water bomb. In the meantime, Ji Hong celebrated on his behalf. Very, very kindly Uncle Sunil - who is visiting from Bangalore - and Uncle Kiran, a friend of Sunil's, invited Ji to the Holi party they were going to. Sunil and Kiran were here for a conference entitled "Opening the Doors of Perception" and the theme was "Juice". Like, juice = electricity, juice = energy, juice = blood and so on. Coincidence that it happened to take place during Holi? I think not. The party was for all the artists and designers and crazymad people who had attended the conference and Ji was the only kid. Sunil was concerned that Ji might therefore find the party not so exciting, but I made it clear that Ji looooves being the centre of attention. Especially when there are water guns involved. So they took Ji off in an Ambassador taxi at 11 am and returned with him at 6 pm looking just slightly worse for wear. A few photos follow documenting Ji's return and wash-up. In the meantime, check out Kiran's very cool website. He's an artist who is now working on neato robotics (and other) stuff. Sunil was telling me about Kiran's latest: it's called electricide, and it is a robot that looks a bit like a scorpion, and it brings it's 'pincers' together and when it does that, a spark is created, and it moves around, but get this, the cord that plugs it into an electrical socket is purposefully loose, so eventually it pulls its own plug out of the socket. My favourite series on Kiran's website thus far is Doing Without. Check it out.

PS: Mum arrived safely and we are so happy she's here!

[Delhi-5-March-2007]