Woke up 9:30 am, 30 mins before my alarm could beep. Made a real awful tea as milk was finished and also at times I am too lazy to wait patiently in the kitchen, waiting for my tea to get perfect color, aroma and other bull sh**. Poured whatever hot crap I got and went straight to the balcony to look at the chaos. As expected same old cliché “ Bura na mano Holi hai”.
People, random people, shuffled age but one thing in common, all with colored face especially red, green, pink and a little of yellow, clothes without clothes no difference. The street all muddy mix with colors and water. It was a pretty good crowd of 20-25 people and yes ladies from their balcony throwing water on them in buckets. And of course kids like little terminators –predators running around with guns taller than themselves injecting colors on every moving being, be it a dog. Songs playing in back ground to get the feel.
You see, go anywhere in India, any region (mostly), there is one song which you can hear playing everywhere or at some place just this song till the day ends, Rang barse… By the way I have allergy to this song, not because it’s old or Amitabh is not my favorite or something just because of its overuse. I like other old songs older than this one and lame ones too but not this one at all. Despite the fact the song is nation’s favorite, especially for Holi.
I don’t remember my first Holi ever but I know that I was very fond of this day when I was a kid or till my teenage. With my other friends I happened to rendezvous early morning in our old clothes with some early preparation like stuffing our pockets with different colors -of all kind and covering ourselves with lots and lots of mustard oil so that later we can rub the color off later easily.
Once reached to our pre decided destination, without any delay used to take out all the colors and 3…2…1 mercilessly putting colors on each other and on every visible place of the body, rubbing hands again in water and color and back again on new unpainted face, boys running for their life and somebody chasing them with their best speed possible. Once the target is caught, he would have to follow the league of colored ones to chase down some new uncolored face. This hunt used to go on for good 3 -4 hours till the time either everybody is out of color or out of uncolored faces or few would stop if they just go out of cloths.
And then going to close-by river taking 100 plunge in cold water of March and come back home in afternoon for a proper shower. Mothers and sisters used to help in un-coloring our body. A long sleep after local country cuisine Dhuska, pua, dahi bada ,katahal etc etc. In the evening ready ourselves for the ABIR. It’s a celebration post Holi game of morning where we go to each other place neighbors, relative, friends etc to … don’t know but just used to go to crash on foods and dry colors (Abir) again.
But this was all back then, once upon a time when I was not so young. Now it has changed. The meaning of holi has changed. Infact I don’t like celebrating anymore, no emotional baggage but just don’t feel like. May be because place has changed, don’t have old friends anymore. Now when I live alone, I don’t hear noise of my mother yelling at me to change clothes before someone ruins my cloth. That’s how the real Holi used to get started…
But of course when I was sipping my tea while gazing at the people, I did whisper Holi Hai… It still brings smile on my face and some nostalgia in my head...
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