Holi, the spring carnival, when members of all castes mingle and let down their hair, sprinkling one another with cascades of red powder and liquid, symbolic of the blood that was probably used in past centuries.
Wendy DonigerAs the Hindu gods are 'immortal' only in a very particular sense - for they had born and they die - they experience most of the great human dilemmas and often seem to differ from mortals in a few trivial details... and from demons even less. Yet they are regarded by the Hindus as a class of beigns by definition totally different from any other; they are symbols in a way that no human beign, however 'archetypal' his life story, can ever be. They are actors playing parts that are real only for us; they are masks behind which we see our own faces.
Wendy DonigerThe Bhagavad Gita is not as nice a book as some Americans think...Throughout the Mahabharata ... Krishna goads human beings into all sorts of murderous and self-destructive behaviors such as war.... The Gita is a dishonest book .
Wendy DonigerWine is the liquid form of the Goddess Tara, who is the saviour of all living creatures, the mother of all enjoyment and Release, the destroyer of dangers and disease, who burns up all sins and purifies the worlds, O Beloved , who grants all success and increases knowledge, understanding and learning.
Wendy Doniger