Holi with Natural Homemade Colours
Holi, the festival of colours, marks the end of winter and heralds the beginning of spring. It is celebrated with great splendour in all places. Colours play a special role in this festival. Traditionally, the bright flowers of spring were used to make Holi colours. However, with time, the natural colours came to be replaced with chemically processed synthetic colours. These colours can cause a host of health problems like skin allergies, eye irritation, etc. The artificial colours can also be harmful to the environment as they take much longer to decompose.
Considering how harmful the artificial colours are, it is best to make colours at home with natural ingredients that are easily available either in your kitchen or in the garden.
Here are some natural ways to make Holi colours.
Red
Red color can be acquired by boiling petals of red hibiscus or red roses, beet or carrots. Tomato or carrot juice, pomegranate peel, puroi xaak guti, red sandalwood can also be used for the same.
Yellow
Yellow colour can be acquired by boiling marigold petals. Turmeric powder can be mixed with gram flour or rice flour for presenting yellow colour.
Blue
Blue pea, jacaranda or any other blue flowers can be boiled for making blue colour.
Pink
Rose, rose periwinkle (nayantara) or four o’ clock flower (godhuli gopal) can be used to make pink colour for Holi. Pink colour can also be prepared by mixing finely chopped beets in water or by boiling onion peels in water.
Green
Green colour can be prepared by boiling different green leafy vegetables in water such as spinach (paleng), mustard greens (laai), coriander (dhania), etc. Neem leaves or other kinds of green leaves with medicinal values can also be helpful in this regard.
Orange
Orange colour can be prepared by using bastard teak (palash), jetuka leaves (henna), etc.
Indian gooseberry (amlokhi), terminalia chebula (hilikha), berry (jamu), etc. can also be used for making natural colours for Holi. So this Holi, let us say no to chemical based colours and play Holi with natural homemade colours.
