Dancing to the drumbeats and smearing colours, people celebrated Holi with gaiety and fervour across the State on Friday. Irrespective of age and cutting across religion, people hit the streets at the crack of dawn and celebrated the festival till late in the afternoon.
Whistling, cheering and drenching each other in colours, youngsters had fun and distributed sweets at different areas.
In Vizianagaram, Union Civil Aviation Minister P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju celebrated holi with family and party men at R & B guest house in Vizianagaram. At Toshniwal Community Centre, members of the Marwari community celebrated ‘Charandi’ (the festival of colours) with fervour. The organising committee chairman Vijay Aggarwal and members L.K. Jain and Sanjay Sharma said the fortnight ‘Charandi’ would conclude with bonfire on Thursday night. Young and the old danced to drumbeats and sprinkled colours and exchanged pleasantries.
At Ongole, revellers, particularly youth, splashed colours on themselves and went around the town on motorcycles exchanging greetings with each other. In a welcome change, many people played holi by using natural colours and promoting eco-friendly celebrations. A few school managements organised celebrations for students, who indulged in merry making with colours extracted from among other fruits and vegetables, beetroot, carrot and watermelon.
''We made it a point to procure natural colours for the celebrations'', explained Bhashyam group of schools Zonal Incharge (academic) N.Susheela.
Members of the Marwari community, who made Ongole their second home, enjoyed singing and dancing to the traditional dhol beats and splashed coloured water at each other. Reports of celebrations came from among other towns, Chirala, Markapur and Kandukur in Prakasam district. Scores of families from the Rajput and Jain community took part in the Holi celebration revelry in Chittoor on Friday. An impressive gathering of men from the community undertook the Kamadhahanam event at the arch of Shiva Temple on the banks of Neeva river on Thursday night and continued the event till early hours of Friday. In the morning, the families resorted to spraying of colours at each other and distributed sweets among them, followed by special pujas at their respective households.
