FESTIVE RIOT
Holi
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Contributors
Sapna Goel
Neha Dasgupta –Parmar
Piyali Bhuiya
Suparna
Ushashi
Chaudhury
Ghosh
Rijhwani Ravinder Mandyam
Editorial
Holi, signifies colour, signifies fun and a whole host of naughtiness. The festival of colour, is used to commemorate the arrival of spring along with some religious connotations. As a child, I did not care to know the reasons, I wanted fun and this festival provided me with ample opportunity. Gulal (coloured powders), water and pichkari (water guns) were my toys. The colours sometimes did come in awful shades like bottle green, silver, golden and brown. Creeping up from behind and catching hold of an unsuspecting individual, to smear colour and shoot water from our guns, marked the highlight of this festival. As with all things, this innocent fun was misused by many, nevertheless I had fun with my friends. It was the age of innocence and with subsequent years’ issues like wastage of water, organic colours and such other things creeped in. There stood many barriers and the mind created some more. The fun got tarnished as I certainly could not play it alone! This issue of Festive Riot is a small tribute to this festival, where writers have expressed their love, fear and invoked nostalgia. It is an effort to stitch together the experience of Holi, which most of us have experienced. So, read on and play along. Take care of yourself and have loads of unadulterated fun. Make Holi happen for our next generation, for the children of today. Bura na mano Holi hai!
Suparna Chaudhury Rijhwani
Fun
Happy Holi
Colours
Holi ‘Ore grihobashi, khol dwar khol laglo je dol’- that is how Tagore beckoned everyone to come out of their closed homes, open the doors of their hearts and enjoy the festival of colours. ‘Holi’ or ‘Dol’ – the words evoke a riot of colours- our ears automatically hear the cacophony of laughter , the mind visualizes playful eyes, smiling lips and colours- red, green, yellow, pink- colours. There is one aspect of Holi which makes it special, is that it is the festival of togetherness. Well, you can’t play Holi alone! You need your Baba, Maa, Dida, Mesho, to touch their feet with ‘aabir’ and seek their blessings. Then you need your cousins and friends to smear ‘gulal’, dunk them in colored water and throw balloons at. If you are a bit more adventurous, you can smear silver, shocking pink or black colours on their faces, colours that remain intact for the next few weeks as a testimony to that mad Holi! You also need your children around, who, you urge not to play with water because ‘jor hobe’ (will catch a cold/fever). Of course, they won’t listen and play only with water. That’s the essence of Holi. In most Indian homes, we have a ‘Satyanarayan Puja’ in the evening since ‘Dol Purnima’ or the Full Moon night, at Holi is considered auspicious. Every Indian festival is made even more special by a ‘puja’ associated with it. ‘Doljatra’ for Bengalees have a direct connection with Tagore since ‘Bashanto Utsab’is an intrinsic part of the Shantiniketan culture, where the students celebrate the arrival of spring with ‘aabir’, ‘palash phool’, songs and dances. In some parts of India ‘Holika Dahan’ is celebrated by burning Holika, the devil, again reiterating the eternal truth that good always triumphs over evil. When we burn something it generally symbolizes the destruction of all negative energy, and thus Holi too, is the symbol of all things positive- the colours representing the different positive energies in our life.
Holi has always played an important role in our Bollywood movies. Whether it is Waheeda Rehman dancing ‘Piya tose naina laage re…ayi holi ayi’ or the evergreen ‘Rangbarse’- a must dance number at all Holi parties, or the more recent, fun-filled Ranbir- Deepika number ‘Balam Pichkari’. The abundance, the joy touches us and we can all relate to the happy dance of the soul! Someone once asked me, “Why do we have a festival every month?” Well, I interpret it in my way. As an educator, I motivate my children to give their best by giving them stickers and incentive cards. These festivals act as motivators for us. We lead very hectic, stressful lives, connect with each other on WhatsApp and Facebook, and hardly have any time to talk to each other. So we look forward to these days to unwind, to laugh, to be together. A happy heart is the remedy for all our woes and these festivals help us to remain happy, and deal with our regular schedule better. In Tagore’s famous words, “Aaj Shobar range rang melate hobe’- Let the colours of love and brotherhood unite us and bring us together.
Ushashi Ghosh Dancer, Teacher, Counsellor
Art Piyali Bhuiya
Piyali Bhuiya Lively
Genuine Artist
Don’t Save Water – Save Holi!!!
As a child I loved Holi. It was a no holds barred festival. We planned and plotted, days in advance on the various strategies we would use to colour everyone. Carefully saved pocket-money was used to buy colours. Old pichkaris were retrieved and tested. The testing providing oodles of fun! Bucketful of little balloons were filled the previous night. Holi did not only mean colours. It meant masti. It was the one day when adults kept aside their unending chores and joined us children in just playing. It was amazing to see ones usually demure mom, masi, chachi dump buckets of water on the neighbouring aunty’s saree covered head. Holi meant going to homes of relatives and neighbours not to sit in their ‘perfectly furnished’ drawing rooms, but to be welcomed into their porches/ chowks/ verandahs. So much more fun to eat pakodas/chips or gujia from a platter being passed around than to eat ‘properly’ from a bone china plate, constantly checking to ensure no crumbs have fallen on the host’s Kashmiri carpet.’Dhulandi’ or the day when one played Holi was the one ‘Hindu’ festival that had no rigorous rituals attached to it.
The day when it was acceptable for the lady of the house to step out of the kitchen and have some fun with her family. Holi meant Fun. It meant singing songs from old Bollywood hits and being absolutely silly. It meant lowering ones defences and letting people peep into the childish side of ones personality. It meant letting go of carefully kept appearances. It meant cracking jokes, giving titles. Metaphorically holi meant forgiving and forgetting. The one day when you buried your grudges and repaired relationships. The day when you made friends. Holi meant tolerance. Tolerance to being ‘dirtied’. Tolerance to being wet. Tolerance to being the butt of a practical joke. Tolerance to others idea of fun. So you can imagine my disappointment when I increasingly hear people say “We don’t play holi, we rather go away on a short trip somewhere”. And be in our own neat, perfect, little, private world unruffled as always. Or my frustration when I see my six-year-old try to control his excitement on getting a new ‘pichkaris‘ because his ma’am at school has told him it’s “bad to play holi”
I know the arguments. Holi means wasting water. Yes, it does. But so much more water is wasted when we take showers instead of ‘bucket baths’. And that water we waste everyday! I don’t hear anyone saying “We have decided to not have a shower head in our bathroom. You see it wastes water” Or that “We have decided to do away with our lawn, such a waste of water. We use the public park instead”. Holi means hours of scrubbing and cleaning afterwards. Yes, it does. But that is a small price to pay in my opinion for the fun and camaraderie it generates. Holi means ‘hooliganism’. Sadly, sometimes that is true too. But it is not the way it is supposed to be. ‘Hooliganism’ is a mass mob mentality that needs to be curbed. Lets say no to ‘hooliganism’ not to Holi Our festivals make us different. They tie us together. They make our culture vibrant and our lives colorful. Lets not be in a hurry to give them up. The crackers of Diwali and the colours of Holi are the unique manifestation of who we are as a ‘people’ . Lets cherish them. The pursuit of a cleaner, healthier environment is a noble cause and should be reflected in our day-to -day living. Lets not make our festivals bear the burden of it.
I say Don’t save water – Not Today! Save water everyday – Today let’s Save Holi!!!
Sapna Goel DREAMER, ROMANTIC, WANDERER
A Holi Day long, long back It was March 1975. Holi, the festival of colours as it was known to most of us living in North India, was upon us. It was the next day. Even my AngloIndian run school, that would try and minimize holidays at Dusshera, had no choice but to declare it a holiday. Self-preservation first
I was busy helping my dad fill up balloons with water. Yes, you read that right. He was not helping me. It was the other way round! I think he enjoyed doing it for me and my brother, two or three tubs full of ready-touse water-filled balloons. He made sure that we enthusiastically participated, and enjoyed the festival with all our friends. I recollect that the balloons that were filled with water, were in turn put into tubs or buckets filled with water. Why? Simple physics at play. Without water in the tubs or buckets, it was likely that the water-filled balloons at the bottom, would burst as the ones as the ones on the top exerted their weight and pressure, on the balloons below. Put into water, they would float, not feel this pressure, even if the bucket was densely packed.
Gulal, or the various coloured powders, were purchased a day or two earlier, and some of it was added to the balloons. The idea was simple. Not just to drench your friend, foe or just a stranger, but to also stain their clothes, at the same time. While the elders were gentle in applying the colours to each other, we youngsters, seemed to get some perverse pleasure in mixing up colours, and try and apply that as much as possible on each other's faces.
It never occurred to us that we might be playing with dangerous chemicals, or that we might end up damaging each other's eyes with the rough application of these colours. I guess that we were just plain lucky, to get away unhurt. Our parents would ask me and my brother, to wear old clothes that were almost ready to be discarded. The idea was, given the kind of mess we would return home in, there was no point in even attempting to wash these clothes! On the other hand, a few of my friends, and particularly their parents, would wear brand new white kurta pyjamas. Perhaps it was their tradition. Or it was their way of indicating to the world, that they could afford to put aside these set of clothes every year. Either way, the rest of us would pounce upon these very willing folks, and apply all sorts of colours on their clothes too!
Then there were the unsuspecting, unwilling folks. Some were recent migrants from the south of India, who were unaware about Holi. Well, they would learn fast enough. Holi, is a two day festival - Chotti and Badi Holi - Small and Big festival. That was the official version. In reality, girls in particular, and the well dressed ones more so, were made aware that Holi was around the corner, even as early as a week before the actual day! This was not limited to school or college going girls. Some would even target poor unsuspecting ladies, heading to work. Typically they were stealth attacks, where the attacker would try to avoid being noticed. I have been witness to hearing some of the most colourful words, being directed towards these invisible attackers. Words and phrases that would made me go red in the face, even with my limited knowledge of Hindi swear words, at that age. Personally, I too have faced being attacked by these "stealth bombers", but that was because my uniform was an all white one, and very tempting to them.
That year, a young South Indian couple who had just migrated to Delhi, and were staying in a barsati (top floor) in our neighbourhood, were warned by well meaning colleagues and friends about Holi, and the need to stay indoors. It is not natural for anyone to stay cooped up inside their home, when they could hear so much commotion taking place below. Perhaps they felt safe enough to come and stand in the balcony to watch the action below. They were noticed. Calls went out to them to come down and join us. They declined. As the saying goes.. "If Mohammed will not go to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammed!" Before the poor folks realised what was happening, some youngsters decided to run up the stairs, and give them the full Holi-Shmoli treatment, if one can call it that. So, the result was that the couple came down and joined in the festivities with all of us.
Happy Holi! Be gentle & play safe!
Ravinder Mandyam Dreamer Reader Intermittent Blogger
Holi – Outside India I had stepped out, out of our country, to view the rest of the world. In this venture, I gained a lot of insights and made a lot of discovery. Celebrating Indian festivals, the way it is done, outside India is one such phenomena I experienced, during this time. So, of course Holi features as one such important festival, which the majority of Indians abroad celebrate. So, there I was dressed in my worst attire to celebrate the festival of colours, worst because that is what I was used to do back home. Since it is assumed that after splashing gulal and water, nothing much will be left of your clothes! The venue is indoors, inside a school hall/ church hall. Most of the members of the Indian community are there, and there are around 200 odd people. However, lo behold! Everybody is dressed in nice Indian clothes, not about-to-bethrown ones at all! I look down and feel completely out-of-place. Anyhow, since I was there and had paid money to attend it, I proceeded to join in. I knew a few faces and smiled and chatted them up. The room was small and was packed with people, some were sitting, some were dancing and some were just standing and talking. It was a very polite scenario, when you realize that the festival is HOLI! A DJ belts out numbers as the ladies danced to its rhythm, a pack of gulal (coloured powder) was around and so some came and applied it on my face, and I reciprocated by applying them back. That was that! Very polite Holi, like a handshake. I stood observing the scene. People were there, trying to recreate an ambience in a faraway land. For some it worked and for others it was just pure nostalgia. A time deep in history, when they had enjoyed a more vibrant Holi, with their near and dear ones. Shaking of my feeling I got dancing just so as to experience joy, which underlines all our festivals back home.
Some more Bollywood numbers later, lunch was announced. The special lunch for the special occasion. People queued up to take their share. The room was abuzz with chatter and music. Lunch was in the buffet style, so I could go around and choose the items. After lunch, some more dancing followed and some photo sessions. This much done, I was ready to go back home. A bit empty, a bit fulfilled, a mixed feeling. The fact that I was able to celebrate the festival at all, was the good feeling that I carried with me, the rest washed away on the shores of nostalgia and missing!
Suparna Chaudhury Rijhwani Blogger Dancer Traveller
Holi Hai
Splash, the colour of happy Splash, the colour of spring Splash, red, green, blue, yellow Splash, and let your heart sing, "Holi hai!" Rejoice in this canvas of colours Scatter your joy in the wind Embrace the love of humanity Embrace the heart of spring... "Holi hai!"
Neha Dasgupta-Parmar Dreamer Writer Human
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