The hazards of the Holi Festival

Our trainee reporter Maryam Al Shamsi's attempts to add a touch of colour to her weekends ended in disaster.

Maryam Al Shamsi at the Holi Festival in Dubai.

In the time since my last blog, my mind constantly has been constantly juggling with story ideas.
Also, in my personal life, I have been thinking a lot, especially about my weekend routine.
I have been getting bored of my mundane weekends. I am in Abu Dhabi four to five days a week and in Dubai two days a week. So, let me unleash my fury.
One of my friends, had convinced me to attend the Holi Festival, a Hindu annual tradition festival, which is supposed to represent good conquering evil.
So instead of roaming around Dubai's streets and arguing for hours about where we want to have dinner, I said: "Let's do it."
The funny thing is my other friend told me about a concert by Vader on Friday.
For those who don't know, Vader are the band who probably pioneered death metal. I am not a huge fan of Vader, but as my friends and I are metal-heads, we would never miss an opportunity to miss a metal concert.
I instead chose to attend the Holi Festival despite my love of metal music. I felt I was betraying the metal community. But this is not the worst part. A day before Vader's scheduled show, the whole concert was cancelled after an anonymous complaint about the concert to the Dubai CID.
I heard from sources that an anonymous complained was made to the police about their music's Satanic content. It all doesn't add up, since Mayhem — also a black metal band — performed in Dubai. The band are notorious for expressing antireligious views.
So, I was relieved for the concert cancellation because it meant my friend could attend the Holi Festival with us.
On our way to the Holi Festival, we were all pumped up, knowing we are getting colour splashed and dirty.
I have to admit I did not know the consequences of getting splashed with colours could produce such horrible results.
The moment we entered the Holi Festival everything seemed amazing.
However, even though it was supposed to be about good defeating evil, many of the people didn't behave in a good way.
Half of the people at the festival were hurling the colours everywhere, and some just straight into people's eyes. I was shocked with their barbaric actions.
Some people got injured. One of my friends eyes got an eye infection and had a cut inside her eyes. She was in so much pain that we had to take her to the hospital.
The first aid workers at the festival were no help at all. It was very badly managed and I wanted to raise a complaint about this.
We rushed to the emergency room at one of the hospitals, then they took us to another hospital.
The night became traumatic and tiresome. It wasn't the best week, but at least I am glad I tried out new things.
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