Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Colour My Fan­ta­sy J’Ou­vert band, which be­gan in 2012, con­tin­ues to build on its lega­cy of cul­tur­al re­vival and tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val ex­pres­sion, ac­cord­ing to band spokesman Varoun Har­rimun­gal.

Har­rimun­gal said the band be­gan with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 65 par­tic­i­pants and was found­ed by a five-man team op­er­at­ing out of his fa­ther’s restau­rant and bar in Ed­in­burgh Vil­lage, Ch­agua­nas. The ini­tia­tive, he ex­plained, was born out of a de­sire to breathe life back in­to the com­mu­ni­ty.

“Our vil­lage was very vi­brant years ago, with ac­tiv­i­ties like crick­et and bazaars, but as youths grew up and moved on, vil­lage life be­came qui­et,” Har­rimun­gal said. “The idea was to bring back that en­er­gy by es­tab­lish­ing a restau­rant and bar and even­tu­al­ly form­ing a J’Ou­vert band.”

Colour My Fan­ta­sy ini­tial­ly sought to in­tro­duce what Har­rimun­gal de­scribed as “pret­ty J’Ou­vert” to Ch­agua­nas, ex­per­i­ment­ing with non-tra­di­tion­al el­e­ments such as winged mas­quer­aders, glit­ter, and dec­o­ra­tive para­pher­na­lia. He not­ed that the band was among the first to in­cor­po­rate glit­ter in­to J’Ou­vert pre­sen­ta­tions.

How­ev­er, au­di­ence pref­er­ences over time prompt­ed a re­turn to tra­di­tion. “We re­alised that peo­ple pre­ferred the tra­di­tion­al way of J’Ou­vert—mud, pow­der, and paint—so we mould­ed the band back in­to some­thing more root­ed in the ori­gins of the fes­ti­val,” Har­rimun­gal said.

The band has since en­joyed com­pet­i­tive suc­cess on the Car­ni­val stage. In 2024, Colour My Fan­ta­sy won first place for King of the Band and placed sec­ond over­all, fol­lowed by a third-place fin­ish in 2025.

For this Car­ni­val sea­son, the band’s pre­sen­ta­tion is themed Old Is Gold, which Har­rimun­gal de­scribed as a trib­ute to the ear­ly days of J’Ou­vert. The king and queen por­tray fig­ures who helped shape Car­ni­val and the ori­gins of J’Ou­vert, ho­n­our­ing the cul­tur­al lead­ers who in­flu­enced its mu­sic, sto­ry­telling, and spir­it.

“Our king and queen will ho­n­our the voice of the peo­ple and the heart of the na­tion,” Har­rimun­gal said. “They rep­re­sent the mu­sic and sto­ry­telling that car­ried Car­ni­val for­ward from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion.”

He added that the stage pre­sen­ta­tion will be sim­ple and re­spect­ful, fo­cus­ing on move­ment, mu­sic, and con­ti­nu­ity. “Styles may change, but the soul of Car­ni­val re­mains the same—old is gold,” he said.

The band has so far reg­is­tered 700 mas­quer­aders.