PLAY ECO-FRIENDLY HOLI WITH RESIDENTS OF STAR CLUB APARTMENT
Bhubaneswar(19/03/2024)/Odisharay News Services: As Holi approaches, here is an ideal society that prepares for eco-friendly, skin-safe healthy colours to make the festival unique and special.
Ms Priyadarsini Das, known popularly as the “Green Queen of Odisha, like last five years, this year too has been busy making natural eco-friendly colours using locally available plant-based materials and soils.
To make it more participatory and a mass movement, the women residents of the apartment have joined hands in making colours using the available materials in their kitchen and resources around them.
Women folk of the apartment like Ms Sandhyarani Bhutia, Ms Meeta Biswal, Ms Tandra Sahoo, Ms Barsa Panda, Ms Dazy, Ms Kalpana, and Ms Sadasha Das wilfully joined the moment to make it a collective affair.
Learning how to extract natural dyes and use is a great fun, said Ms Bhutia. Our society has set an example to stay away from toxic free Holi, by making and using colours from natural dyes guided by Priyadarsini is absolutely meaningful said Ms Biswal.
While busy sorting that leafs, flowers, roots and barks for preparation of colours we have learned so much to make this Holi special, said another resident Ms Tandra.
The residents of the Star Club apartment have understood how to create a striking balance between celebration and protection of health and environment.
All the women are busy collecting different locally available resources from the nature said Ms Kalpana, another resident of the apartment.
To extract colours under the guidance of Ms Priyadarsini we are collecting raw Turmeric, Heena, Palas, Mango Leaf, Rose Petals, Neem Leaf, Aal powder, Indigo, Coffee Powder, Tea Powder, Onion Peel, Palas flower (Flame of the Forest), pomegranate, violet cabbage, Beetroot, Aparajita flower, Ratanjot flower, soils of different varieties this year, said Ms Dazy another resident of the society.
Last year many people from outside including the relatives and friends of the residents joined the Holi whereby the entire colour was prepared by the Green Queen.
This year we all are enjoying the extraction of colours to send a message across for a safe and eco-friendly Holi, said Ms Barsa Panda, another resident. This has been a concern that the colours available in the market are mostly toxic and harmful for our skin and health.
It not only would affect the environment, particularly soil, air and water, but at the same time it requires lot of water, cleaning agent and detergent to wash the chemical colours from our body after the Holi.
So, this initiative is to create awareness and motivate environmentally conscious people to play a safe and eco-friendly Holi, said Ms Priyadarsini Das.
“If we believe in the legend that Lord Krishna played Holi with Radha to get rid of his complex that he was of dark colour, they must have used colours extracted from natural colours, so why should not we continue with this tradition”, said the Green Queen.
She added by saying that we want this should be a mass movement to use natural colours extracted from locally available resources for celebrating our festivals like Holi.
