Another sleepless night. Another early morning of watching the sun rise. The only thing that makes this particular night different from countless others is that today is Holi. The festival of colours. What I believed was the Hindu New Year till an argument with other wise-guys in the hallowed portals of our ever-alluring mess forced me to be less confident. What was surprising was that everyone else came up with his own opinion of what the New Year was. The result of the argument is still pending, probably because all of us are too lazy to check up the facts on the net. Note to self- check up the facts on the net after typing out this post. Unlike most other people, Holi holds no charm for me whatsoever these days. Before my aunt announced that she would be visiting this evening with my cousins, something that I’m eagerly looking forward to as I’ve not met them for some time now, the high point of today was going to be the latest Roadies episode. Followed by Premiership Saturday, which again pales into comparison with Grand Slam Sunday that awaits us tomorrow. Here’s hoping for a United victory. How different all this is from the little Lefty who would be shivering with excitement till a couple of years ago, as this momentous day dawned.
Back in my hometown, the night before Holi, I would be quivering with excitement, supremely confident that I would never get any sleep in this titillating state of exuberance. I’d get up early in the morn, don the clothes discarded so long ago, that would miraculously appear that day, and impatiently wait for the ‘council of elders’ to deem it sunny enough to go out and indulge myself. Our huge ancestral home was more often than not filled to the brim with near and dear relatives, who had managed to squeeze some time off to be at home that day. For us younger ones, the festivities would begin with filling up buckets of water and adding generous amounts of colour to them- ammo for our pichkaaris, those beloved piston shaped plastic weapons. Some senseless and almost ineffective squirting on each other would set the tone for greater things to come. We would then all unite and proceed to the terrace. An unsuspecting stranger in an inviting spotless white shirt or kurta, a squirt, a splat, a triumphant whoop and a gleeful “Bura na maano holi hai” would round off the proceedings.
By then, the council of elders would have decided that time had now deemed it prudent for them to start too, and the entire melee would proceed to colour the grounds. The optimistic mater and the aunts who chose to minimize the damage by applying oil, would be wiped clean of the same before being subjected to considerable doses of colour by the doting devars. We, on our part, would go from house to house in the neighbourhood, armed with buckets, pichiikaris and colour, waiting to pounce on the clean friend who came out. The same soul would come out with his own ammo, hopelessly outnumbered but determined not to go down without a fight. In the vicinity, the infamous gwalas of our beloved Railway Minister’s fame would be playing their own brand of holi- cow-dung galore. Eggs and even mud was considered positively genteel. Considering the high standards of rowdiness that were set before us to try and emulate, it is nothing short of shocking that we didn’t even tear off each others pockets. How disappointed the gwalas must have been with us. The only way we allowed ourselves to be affected was to be exceedingly careful in house-hopping, lest some stray cow-dung found our way to us.
As morning wore on, the festivities would become more intense. Water balloons, Holi battles with teams, pukka rang- you name it. Our innocent and charming visages would soon become a palette of badly mixed colours, the already worn clothes now resembling rags. Exhausted and hungry, and outdoors in the same ragamuffin guise, we would gorge on the puas and steaming hot mutton that had been prepared. Then the time of undoing the damage done would come. Water, soap and shampoo, scrub-a-dub-dub, expletives to that malicious soul who had put dry colour on your hair so that water would exacerbate the damage rather than mend it. An hour or so of hard work and one was almost clean again. In my case, the palms would always bear telltale signs of holi. Pulao-meat for lunch and then, siesta time.
Holi evenings and mornings are as disparate as chalk and cheese. While the mornings are nothing but exhausting wildness, the evening rituals are solemn and formal. Everything is arranged in its proper place- the abeer in that segmented glass plate surrounded by tempting dahi-bades and other assorted snacks as one either goes visiting relatives or waits for the same to come calling. Apart from touching the elders’ feet in the quintessential gesture of asking for blessings, the same feet are adorned with abeer by the younger ones. The elders then reciprocate by sprinkling abeer on your face along with the traditional teeka. It was a standing joke that I would be given my own spotless white kurta-pajama every year for the evening which I would only wear that once in the entire year. After meeting some relatives and friends, we would generally all assemble at some place for a mega-gathering. While the elders sat and chatted, we would indulge in the mindless but eminently enjoyable games of tag or something, our games punctuated by the arrival of yet another relative who would be added to the gathering, meaning the aforementioned ritual had to be repeated on the latest additon. Wiping myself clean of the abeer with the new hanky that came along with the kurta-pajama, totally spent, I would, with some regret, call it a highly successful day which had sadly ended.
Those days of innocent mirth seem so far off now. Today, I shall probably just wish my folks a happy holi, have my breakfast of Puas and doze off while they go play holi with the neighbours who I hardly know or make any effort to know. I’ll join them for the traditional lunch of Pulao-meat of course. Except that it’ll just be us. A lot has changed since back then.
My cousins and friends who made anniversaries of this day so eagerly awaited and enjoyable are scattered across various corners of the country- Manipal, Kolkata, Tumkur, Bangalore, Kanpur and even as far as Malaysia and Arkansas. The others are in that merciless grind which is sadly necessary to put you in a decent college. Following our move to the national capital, the ancestral house has lost the tag of ‘home’ that it had borne for almost 7 decades. Every year on holi, a relentless wave of nostalgia comes crashing down on me as I recall all those memories that form an indelible and cherished part of my life. I miss it all. I miss my hometown. I miss the rambling old place that I used to call home. I miss my narrow gali and the familiar muhalla. I miss the frequent meetings with my cousins and the daily games with my friends. Like all other paradoxical beings who “long to grow up when they are children and long to become children again when they’ve grown up”, I miss my childhood.
# posted by Saagar @ 7:28 am
: 6:18 pm 
