There were celebrations galore for Vizagites over the weekend. While cricket fans cheered the Indian team to victory on Saturday and the Diwali fervour stepped up by Sunday, revellers celebrated the spookiest night of the year - Halloween – with parties in the city hotels. Across the world Halloween was celebrated on October 31, but the city rung in the Halloween fervour well in advance with some others gearing up to celebrate it on Wednesday as well.
At The Park, the Halloween party was all things ghostly with décor resembling a cemetery. The graveyard scene, carved pumpkins, a photo booth with wizard hat and the magical broom prop were set up for the pagan festival with visitors dressed up in spooky costumes greeted by ghoulish characters, escorting them inside the dark scary venue which made them feel being in the middle of a cemetery.
The Halloween celebrations in the city picked in the past two to three years and are slowly moving beyond costumes to music as well. DJ Deep Brown from Kolkata who was in the city for the party presented a mash of EDM music with a haunting effect. DJ Rahul Kedia, who played at Vue Bar at Hotel Novotel, used an audio-visual set to create the Halloween effect. Dentist Suresh Gorantla, who attended the spooky party at Vue Bar, said the audio-visual music gave the party a different dimension. The city has a good number of expats living and working in various corporate firms. For them the parties are their annual tryst with all things ghoul-filled.
Sana Bettaib, who hails from Tunisia and now settled in the city, dressed up as vampire Cleopatra for the Halloween night party.
“Halloween for me is all about costumes and fun with friends. I play with colours of black, white and red on the face and love accesorising to complete the spooky look. This year, I celebrated Halloween with my husband and friends from America and Africa who live here,” said Sana.
Her husband Dheeraj Varma Kalidindi came dressed as a zombie. The couple’s Halloween party celebrations trickled on to a house party hosted by one of their expat friends on Monday.
The kids of Teeny Boppers joined in the celebrations at Hawa Mahal on the Beach Road on Monday, while Greendale’s annual Halloween bash will be held at the school campus on Tuesday.
Collegians were the most excited about the spooky Halloween costume parties. Twenty-two-year-old MBA student Shreya T., said: “My college friends are planning a party and I’m going as a mummy and have looked up ideas on Pinterest for that. My focus is going to be on the make-up.”
Russians Ksenia Nazarova who is an intern at a city hotel was excited to be a part of the celebrations and dressed as Harley Quinn.
Other popular costumes in the city parties included Joker and Batman characters.
