The Holi Festival 1

India is not everyone’s cup of tea, but when choosing a country to go to as an exchange student, I made it mine. My name, Malini, is Indian, and Father’s father is originally from India, so I was really enthusiastic about getting to know this faraway country.

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What I didn’t anticipate was Sandra. Sandra was assigned to my host family along with me, and we were roommates and companions in this cultural journey. The first thing I noticed was that Sandra hated everything about India. She didn’t like the heat. (Oh, thank you, India, because otherwise I’d be tromping around in the snow banks of Rochester, New York!) She didn’t like the clothes. (I like to wear the Punjabis, lightweight slacks and tops, because they are comfortable and colorful.) She barely ate any of the food. (Can I have some more lamb biryani, please?) And she thought that riding in rickshaws was dangerous. (Well, okay, she has a point, but I find the rides exhilarating nonetheless!)

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We were both learning to speak Hindi, the main language of the country. I’m not as good at languages as Sandra, but I do try, so it was humiliating when I made a mistake in front of my host parents and Sandra laughed and corrected me.

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Then came Holi, an Indian festival that celebrates the end of winter and the advent of spring, a season of color, joy, and hope. When friends from school picked us up at the house, we were armed with water pistols, or pichkaris, containing colored water and containers of colored powder called gulal. We had been told that people would smear color on us, so we knew what to expect — but nothing had prepared us for the experience itself.

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The streets were filled with music, drumbeats, and dancing — throngs of people covered in the colored powder from head to toe. Sandra and I melted into the crowds with our friends, and soon we were in a war of color. We smeared powder on our friends, and our friends smeared us back. Yellow, orange, fuchsia, purple, bright blue, and green powder covered our faces, our hair, our hands, and our clothes. Even Sandra was into the act — smearing, spraying, and doing something I had not seen since we had arrived in Mumbai: she was smiling!

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My host mother says that Holi is a festival that celebrates good over evil, and pushes out the unpleasantness and hardships in our lives. I believe that it is so, because after that day, I didn’t hear one more complaint about India from Sandra. It was as if the color brought her into the fabric of all that is India.

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The next week, Sandra was reborn. She bought a sari and swore off jeans forever. She wore bangles on her feet, and suddenly she couldn’t eat enough Indian food, which she declared the “best food ever.” Sandra stopped ridiculing me when I made mistakes in Hindi, and instead offered to help me with my pronunciations. The Saturday after Holi, we ventured out and got a mehndi, a tattoo of flowers and patterns painted on with henna. The mehndi stayed on our hands for two weeks, but our shared love of India wore long after that.

Question. Which sentence from the story BEST supports the conclusion that Malini is more adventurous than Sandra?

A. The first thing I noticed was that Sandra hated everything about India.

B. Well, okay, she has a point, but I find the rides exhilarating nonetheless!

C. Sandra and I melted into the crowds with our friends, and soon we were in a war of color.

D. I believe that it is so, because after that day, I didn’t hear one more complaint about India from Sandra.