Holi Hai!!

After reading about all the horrors of holi that MM and other people went through, I had this urge to lift the heavy pall off this fun festival.
I have some great memories of Holi. Every year my parents would be away all day for three days around holi. They would be off to this temple to attend a religious camp sort of a thing. This used to upset me & my sister a lot when we were younger as we could never play holi with them. As we grew older we started playing holi with some cousins and friends and we were eventually quite grateful for all the freedom. We would run wild on the streets which may have been unsafe but we were always in groups so it was great fun. I'm pretty sure my mum still doesn't know that we actually used to go to a couple of neighbours homes a few streets away to play holi. And these were never just dry gulal kind of celebrations but loads of water, tough colors and of course eggs.

Another reason why holi is special to me is that I met P on the day of Holi about seven years back. I can still see him standing on the first floor opposite my friend's house and looking down at all of us drenched in colors and water. He also claims that he remembers the day and infact exactly the way I looked then, looking up, squinting in the sun with one hand shading my eyes, wearing a white kurta. The funny part is that I never wore a white kurta on Holi. How could I when I was well aware of the kind of holi we played? It was always a some shabby pants with a t- shirt that I anyway wanted to throw away. He has some bollywood image of me. It's kind of sweet I think. I should have just let him believe that, its more romantic than my version . So till we got married, it was this festival that let us celebrate something together in front of so many people who were completely unaware of our relationship. P would fill up a bucket of water and throw it on somebody else but most of it would somehow land up on me and other silly teasing games went on . Those were the days.
After we got married, the holi tradition was followed religiously, not in the lanes any more but on our own terrace with a few cousins & friends. This time with T being so young, we didn't want to do anything at home but couldn't resist a friend's invitation. So we went to this fancy farm party which we thoroughly enjoyed. They had a rain dance kind of a floor which was great, dancing in the rain gives me such a high even better than the bhang. I felt guilty about all that wasted water but what the heck it was just one day. It was a pitty we had to get back home early as T was home. I can picture T in a tub full of colored water next year.

What is sad is that most people treat most festivals as just holidays or some mandatory customs forced down by their families. I believe in celebrating these days. We anyway don't rationalize and discard most beliefs that our parents had and have a very different idea of religion and spirituality than them. So the least I want to do is celebrate such fun festivals with my kids and give them some traditions and roots to call their own.