Tarun Chhabra’s 15-year effort to capture Indian culture in a “self-initiated” photo project has yielded this “good and rare picture” of Holi celebrants in India. Holi is the Hindu festival of love in which participants splash each other with bright colors that represent “energy, life, and joy.” Chhabra writes of the experience, “I was kneeling down in the middle of a group of people who were singing bhajans (devotional songs). People were throwing lots of water and colors, and I was fully drenched … My eyes were filled with water-and-color paste, and this was very irritating and painful. With great difficulty I tried to slightly open my eye … and found the beautiful moment unfolding just in front of me. People … were singing devotional songs, and red color was flying like clouds. This amazing moment [gave] me inner strength, and I dared to open my eye slightly more to compose the picture.”

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