Tag: holi

Categories
Swaad 'Anu'saar

Holi khao!

We help you get into the festive spirit with delicious recipes for Holi based snacks and drinks. Enjoy your day!
anurita guptaby Anurita Gupta

Holi kab hai? Kab hai holi?  Gabbar may keep asking this question for centuries to come but we know that this festival of colours and sparkles is today. While we deliberate a lot on what we will wear to the building society Holi party, you should also make some effort to have fun at home with food that is specially made during this festival to add more colour and joy to life.

Take a look at the Holi ki daawat menu:

THANDAI

This festive drink is a balanced and amazing combination of various aromas arising from its ingredients of rose petals, melon seeds, nuts and of course, the saffron. Famous for its taste and fragrance in North and Central India, thandai, when served chilled, has a magical impact on you. Rose and saffron calm the senses, while the nuts and spices keep you full so you have enough energy to play Holi all day long. Here’s how you make it.

Ingredients: ½ cup almonds, blanched and peeled; 30 pistachios, blanched, peeled and finely chopped; ½ cup cashews; 10 black peppercorns; 1.5 tbsp rose syrup/1/2 cup dried rose petals; 1.5 tbsp fennel seeds (saunf); ½ cup poppy seeds (khus khus); ¾ cup melon seeds (magaj); 3 tsp green cardamom seeds; 1 cup sugar; a few strands of saffron, 1 ½ litre milk, drinking water to make a paste.

Method: Grind all the ingredients other than milk, sugar and saffron in a food processor with some drinking water. StoreThandai this paste in an airtight container in the refrigerator. Combine the milk and sugar and bring to a boil. Cool and put in the refrigerator for 2 hours. To serve, put 2 to 3 tbsp of the thandai paste in a glass and top with chilled milk garnished with pistachios and saffron strands.

Hot tip: you can always add the popular intoxicant bhang to this drink to have some more fun on Holi 🙂

GUJIYA

While many of us make the traditional puran poli on Holi, there is one more mithai stuffed with the goodness of mawa and nuts that everyone looks forward to on this colourful day and that is gujiya. You can make tonnes of it in advance and store to relish on Holi and days later. It tastes best when you make it in ghee.

Ingredients: ½ kg maida; 5-6 tbsp melted ghee.

For the filling: 500 gm mawa/khoya (evaporated milk); pinch of cardamom powder; 25 gm each of chopped almonds, raisins, desiccated coconut; 400 gm sugar

Method:

Gujiya– Sieve the flour and add ghee to it. Now with light finger strokes, rub the maida and ghee together so that the mixture looks like breadcrumbs. Now add some water to it and knead very lightly till such time that you get a soft yet tight dough. Cover and keep aside.

– Mash the mawa and fry it in a saucepan until it changes colour to light brown. Now add sugar, almonds, cashews, coconut, raisins and cardamom powder to it and mix well. Fry for a couple of minutes and let the mixture cool until it reaches room temperature.

– Divide the dough into small balls and roll in about 5 inches diameter. Fill half the circle with the stuffing and cover with the other half. You have to now twist the edges inwards or seal the gujiya with a few strong pinches on the edges. Prepare all the gujiyas like this.

– Heat up the ghee and fry them until golden brown.

Hot tip: you can also use gujiya moulds in order to make the perfect shape. I use them for convenience and of course, the uniformity. Just brush the moulds with oil before you start.

BHANG KE PAKORE

Holi par bhang ki baat na ho? Not possible. When everyone enjoys bhang on this festival, why shy away from making a special snack out it that everyone enjoys? Make vegetable fritters made out of chickpea flour (besan) and a really small amount of bhang that can be a lot of fun 🙂

Ingredients: 250 gm each of besan, potatoes, cauliflower, onions, spinach and aubergine; 10 gm bhang seed powder; pinch of soda bicarb; 5 gm ajwain (carom seeds); 5 gm amchoor (dry mango powder); salt to taste; oil for deep frying.

Method:

Mix together all the dry ingredients and add enough water to make a medium consistency batter. Now dip all the veggies in this batter and coat them completely. Deep fry them until golden brown. Serve hot with khajoor aur imli ki chutney.

With that, I hope you have many friends and family over to your house on this special festival that adds a lot more warmth and colour to your life. Holi Mubarak 🙂

Anurita Gupta is a media professional who is passionate about two things – food and radio. Her love for all things food makes her a foodie with a cause.

(Pictures courtesy www.saveur.com, www.karthiksmithai.com, www.festivalsofindia.in. Images are used for representational purpose only)

Categories
Beauty

Skin and hair care for Holi

We wait for Holi all year, don’t we? This year, celebrate Holi hassle-free with some skin and hair care tips.
by Deepa Mistry | @MissTipsytoes on Twitter

Holi, a festival of colours, brings everyone closer. We all start preparing way in advance for this festival, but along with other preparations, we should take care of our skin and hair as well.

In the riot of fun and colours, we end up ignoring our skin and hair. Hair exposed to chemical colours can become dull, dry and brittle. If your skin is acne or dandruff-prone, you need to take a lot of care as these colours can cause severe damage. Holi is the time when the skin loses it natural oils and softness, owing to the chemicals contained in colours, which can cause redness or rashes. Naturally, taking proper precautions cannot hurt. Start with using only organic or natural colours.

Care before Holi begins:

playing HoliIf you ordinarily wear lenses, don’t wear them while playing. Wear a pair of spectacles or sunglasses.

Remember what grandma always said: apply oil before you soak yourself in those colours. Apply generous amounts of coconut oil on your skin and hair, especially on your hands, elbows and legs. Castor oil is another alternative as well.

30 minutes before heading out to play, apply sunscreen on your face and hands. The colours and the heat can cause severe damage. If you suffer from acne, make sure you moisturise your skin well with a cream containing SPF. Make sure you apply lots of lip balm.

Wear dark clothes and preferably of a light material, and full sleeved to cover maximum skin to keep it protected. Avoid wearing jeans as they become heavy once soaked. Apply dark nail polish as light shades or no nail polish tend to let colour settle on your nails – this then becomes difficult to get rid of.

Don’t leave your hair open; tie it up in a ponytail. Wear a scarf or bandana or a cap to cover your hair and still look chic.

Avoid any salon treatments like waxing, threading, facials etc. 2 to 3 days prior to Holi.

Drink lots of water to keep your body hydrated at all times.

Care after playing Holi:

It is very difficult to get rid of colour instantly, hence rinse your hair with cold water as hot water tends to make colour stick to your roots.

Condition your hair with coconut oil or olive oil mixed with 1 tsp vinegar and rinse. If you have dry hair, follow the hot oil and towel treatment for the next following days for softer hair and to prevent hair fall.

Use raw milk and besan pack on your skin to make it smooth to remove all dryness and harshness caused by colour.

Soak fenugreek seeds in four tsp curd and apply it on your scalp. Keep for 30 minutes and then wash away with shampoo.

Keep washing off the colour whenever possible to prevent skin irritation. It might be difficult to carry rose water or cucumber juice with you, but keep it handy. It will soothe your skin.

If you suffer from any acute skin or hair troubles consult a physician.

We wish you all a safe and happy Holi!

(Pictures courtesy venues.meraevents.com, mattersindia.com)

Categories
Wellness

Holi hai!

Heading out to play Holi? Presenting some before and after-the-revelry tips for you to remain safe from Holi’s ill effects.
by Dr Ajaya Kashyap and Dr Abha Kashyap

Part III of III

It is Holi today, and if you’re reading this, chances are you’re looking for safe ways to play Holi. Or it’s possible that you’ve got colour all over yourself and nobody, including yourself, recognises you.

Either way, we’ve got some tips that will help.

Try to dissuade people from applying colour all over your face with their hands. If you fail to do so, be especially careful in keeping your eyes and lips tightly shut. Always request the person not to smear the colours near the eyes.

Apply cold cream around your eyes and make a thick coating of it over there. This would ensure that the colours can be easily removed when you wash your eyes. When trying to remove the colours around your eyes, keep your eyes tightly shut and use warm water.

You can cover your hair with a dupatta/bandanna and a polypeptide-based gel can be applied to partially repel colour.

Caring for your eyes is equally important while playing Holi. People wearing contact lens should take them off before they begin to play with the colours. When somebody is spraying water colours on your face, keep your eyes shut to prevent damage to the pupil, cornea and iris.

After you’re done playing Holi:

– Don’t sit in sunlight after playing Holi. It makes colours difficult to remove and harms the skin as well. Sit in the shade even when playing outdoors.

– Don’t remove colours by scratching your skin with your nails. Use a granular scrub on the body and face to get rid of the colour.

– Wash off colour from your hair two to three times with shampoo and remove the colour completely. Apply a lot of moisturiser on the body and face after taking a shower.

– Wash the colour off your body at the earliest. Use a basic body wash and if the colour doesn’t go off after the wash, try the aforementioned remedy.

– Make a paste of gram flour (besan), juice of lemon and heavy cream or some milk and apply it on the stained area, let it sit for few minutes and then remove it by taking it off with olive oil.

– Hair should be deep conditioned after the wash. Make sure your hair is clean. Apply a hair mask after two-three days to cure the damage.

– Remove the colour from your face by using a light oil like jojoba or grapeseed. Wash off with face wash and lukewarm water. Follow up with lots of moisturiser.

– Do not bleach, shave, wax, go for facials or clean-ups the following week. Give your skin and body some time to recover from the damage.

Have a happy and safe Holi 🙂

Dr Ajaya Kashyap is Chief Surgeon in Cosmetic and Plastics from Fortis Hospital; Dr Abha Kashyap is an aesthetic image consultant, MedSpa.

(Picture courtesy theatlantic.com)

Categories
Overdose

Bura maano, Holi hai!

Jatin Sharma is aghast at people’s moronic behaviour during Holi, and wonders why they forget basic decency while having fun.

Holi stands apart from all the other festivals in India. For starters, Holi is the only festival in which, instead of wearing new clothes, we head out the door wearing our old tattered ones. For another, it is the most mischievous festival of the country. In fact, the statement ‘Bura na maano, Holi hai’ pretty much explains everything that is allowed in the name of Holi.

Holi is one festival where everybody has the ‘license’ to tease others in society. But in recent times, people have forgotten the most important aspect of Holi: it is still a festival.

By itself, a festival is supposed to spread sweetness and light, and Holi also does that. A festival is meant to bring society together to share good thought and happy moments. But as time goes by, everyone has turned Holi into a joke holiday tinged with cruelty.

People are now looking at Holi as a festival that gives them the chance to harass and torture others, sometimes complete strangers. How else do you explain the use of polythene bags in place of balloons or oil paints instead of gulaal? The simple gulaal-and-water routine of Holi has now given way to Chinese colours and rain dances. And the ‘festivity’ starts even before the day of revelry, with groups of people hitting the terraces of their buildings and aiming for people on the streets, especially those who are well-dressed and probably going for job interviews.

The more I see it, the more it begins to appear that the only reason we use these strange colours during Holi is so that we can laugh at others for the next 10 days as the colours refuse to fade quickly. And certain men should just go ahead and announce that the only reason they participate in the festival is so that they can touch women inappropriately in the guise of celebration.

We have become such hooligans with this festival, not caring how people will suffer for our five minutes of enjoyment. We aim for moving bikes, trying to hit the rider as hard as we can with our water balloons, not realising that we are putting the rider at risk of death or blindness with our antics. We put fear in the hearts of several girls who fear being molested in the name of Holi. We deliberately colour somebody’s head so that he or she has to keep washing their hair for a week, and still find colour with each wash.

Let alone human beings, our moronic behaviour extends to targetting animals as well. Painted dogs and tattooed cows are becoming a common sight post-Holi in recent years.

If we are one those characters who use pakka rang, or waste water, or paint animals, or throw balloons on passers-by or molest girls, we should be ashamed of ourselves. On the one hand, we try to show the world that we are a decent society that stands against the atrocities on women, but on the other, we go ahead and molest women in fun. On the one hand, Maharashtra is going through a severe drought, which we discuss during our smoke breaks at work, but on the day of the revelry, we will still waste water because it is ‘only for one day, so it’s okay’.

We say we love animals, but we think colouring them green, yellow and red is funny. We talk of donating our eyes and urge others to do so too, but we think nothing of blinding others with chemical colours.

The hypocrisy in our society has made us forget the actual fun and frolic of Holi, and that it is a festival of colours to be celebrated with goodness and innocence. It should make people and animals feel safe, and let them rejoice without having to look over their shoulders.

Most importantly, it should be celebrated in the spirit that Lord Krishna celebrated it with. He would have hated our silver and green chemical colours, and He would never put oil paints on gopis. And He definitely wouldn’t put gulaal on his cow.

This year, celebrate Holi to spread happiness, and not to target people. And if you’re still looking at it as an excuse to harass people, then to everyone else I say, please, bura maano, Holi hai.

Jatin Sharma is a media professional who doesn’t want to grow up, because if he grows up, he will be like everybody else.

(Picture courtesy telegraph.co.uk)

Categories
Deal with it

State bats for responsible Holi this year

Government wants the State to celebrate an environment-friendly Holi this year. You can buy natural colours at the Mantralaya, too.
by The Editors | editor@themetrognome.in

There’s a severe drought on in the State, the likes of which has not been seen for several years. The situation is set to spiral totally out of control, with farmers letting livestock go, and people looking for water to drink far and wide.

Meanwhile, the rest of the State is gearing up for Holi.

It is indeed a worrying dichotomy that while one of Maharashtra grapples with even small quantities of drinking water, cities like ours have water in plenty, and which we will use to the maximum limits when Holi arrives. Anticipating the unprecedented wastage of water that is soon to take place as the Holi celebrations get underway, State Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan wants us all to celebrate responsibly.

What Chavan wants

“Please avoid the use of water to celebrate Holi this year,” Chavan said via a statement released earlier this evening. “Opt for natural colours and celebrate a water-less Holi if possible. The cities tend to celebrate also with plastic balloons and synthetic colours, which damage the environment and which are dangerous for health as well.”

So committed is the State to a responsible and environmentally-conscious Holi this year, that a stall selling natural colours will be set up for the public at the Mantralaya on March 21 and 22. Apart from this, public service announcements will be made through all radio and TV channels (private and government-controlled), as well as in 205 cinema theatres across the city and State. The Government will also flash these announcements on local trains and BEST buses.

Plans are also afoot to have Chavan and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar will communicate, via voice calls, with about one crore mobile subscribers and talk about using non-chemical based colours during Holi, apart from considering a water-less celebration. A letter bearing the public service message will also reach Government offices, editors of newspapers and channels, schools, colleges, courts, etc.

(Picture courtesy handmaidliset.blogspot.com)

Exit mobile version