HOLI

Holi - from its mythological past to its present. The festival of Holi actually starts the night before with a bonfire made up of all the dried leaves and branches left through the winter. It is a way of clearing these and making way for spring. Metaphorically though, tmhe fire is meant to signify the destruction of evil - the burning of the ‘Holika’ - a mythological character. The heat from the fire is also a reinder that winter is behind and that the hot summer days are ahead.

The following morning begins with worshipping Krishna by lovingly smearing his idol with ‘gulal’ - the colours used to play Holi. This is a festival that is as much a gateway to celebrate the arrival of spring as much as it is a way to celebrate the season of love. Krishna is the ultimate lover with his ‘gopikas’, who are a bunch of beautiful women that Krishna forever seems to be chasing. And yet this icon of love spends most of his time seeking out his only lover Radha. So Krishna’s love is the epitome of the freshness of youth amidst all its playfulness. Without Krishna and his lover Radha there can be no Holi.

There are more stories. This is the one about Holika who believed herself to be immuned to death by fire. And yet when she questions her nephew Prahlad’s devotion to the ultimate of Gods, Vishnu and threatens to walk through fire with the intention to destroy the prince, she is herself consumed by the fire whereas the prince comes out unscathed. This is the Holika that is burnt the night before Holi as the triumph of the good over evil.

This is where the celebration with colours comes in. Holi is supposed to be an exuberant show of goodwill and cheer. The riot of colours follows a revelry of colour play - quite unmatched in its boisterousness - and takes place amidst the sprinkling or the shower of coloured powder. And when this is combined with water it is anything but a damp squib. Everybody is welcome and everybody is pardoned for his or her revelry.

This is for them an occasion for ‘Bombne’ (yelling to one’s heart’s content). In Punjab, which is northern India its people hold wrestling tournaments, while at the other end of the spectrum of activity, virgins from Gujarat on India’s west create images of their Goddess ‘Gauri’ out of the ashes left by the bonfire of the night before. Conceivably, not the last variation of Holi is played along India’s eastern state of Orissa that straddles the Bay of Bengal. Here married women carefully sweep away the ashes of the bonfire, to mark the spot with drawings made out of a paste of powdered sundried rice and water.

Holi’s cultural affinity with West’s Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Holi is a play of colours celebrated amidst riotous mirth and merriment, just as Halloween is. The impossible attires worn at Halloween are delightfully significant of man’s continuing efforts at recreating new identities, just in the way that obliteration of identities are carried out at Holi through the smearing of the colours. Holi is also reminiscent of Thanksgiving and Christmas inasmuch as all these festivals are celebrated with one’s own kith and kin - never with strangers. After all, people all over the world cherish the same dreams and desires, no matter how narrow or broad the boundaries.

Holi takes on different images and flavors across the country. While the bonfire is burnt everywhere, Krishna and Radha are courted mostly in Eastern India and along the eastern coast of Southern India in Tamil Nadu. Then there is the ‘ride of the King’ that is celebrated in the Western state of Gujarat, in Central India and in the tribal forests of Eastern India. This is a rite of passage where the King (an imaginary one) is paraded through the village and lampooned. Perhaps a way of pressure-release by the King’s subjects (again imaginary). And a story reflecting of repression and repeated quite inescapably and endlessly around the world. In the North Western state of Rajasthan, Holi is an occasion for tournaments wherein horsemen pelt each other with pellets filled with colour. Along the coastline of Maharashtra, which is a western state bordering the Arabian Sea, the men and women get together in a special dance that is meant to provide them with a release for all their repressed feelings, needs and desires. This is done by these people uttering sound through their mouths, made peculiar by the striking of their mouths with the back of their hands.