Holi, the festival of colors, has multiple significances to different people across the country. For me it is special. Marking the onset of Spring. A time to immerse myself in colors and fun. The smell of gulal, festive food being cooked, and overnight filling balloons and laughing on the thought of who all I will color.
It’s the day my father was born, so no matter what date it falls we celebrate his birthday. A man of discipline, he was religious of his morning ritual. He would take bath, wear crisp white Kurta Pajama, walk to the mandir. On the way back we would wait to color him. Pouring water from the balcony and then hiding for hours. This year I missed him in silence and memories.
Holi now holds both absence and togetherness.
The festival has taken many shapes over the years – as a kid going out and playing with a sense of abandon, as a parent emphasizing on the safety to teach protection, trekking in the mountains chasing nature enjoying solitude, and now longing for kids to come home on the festival. Holi has always been a mirror of life, not just a festival.
Growing in an extended joint family, Holi was on terrace and a day long festival. Starting at 6am and ending at 5pm to get ready for evening pooja. With lives being busy, traffic on roads and distances between us, meeting family seems like a tough call. Though with technology we could all fit ourselves for a few minutes on a family call.
Today I experienced it from the aspect of lowering guardrails or breaking conscious walls. As we celebrated it in our colony, the feeling of community was felt and experienced well. Greeting neighbors and applying colors made me realize how we walk with walls around us. These are the same people I cross every day during the morning run. To some I wish a quick hello; I smile to exchange greetings and some unacknowledged. On the same street we are strangers and just one festival connects us. Today everyone walked up to put color and said, ‘you are the one running in the morning.’ The festivals temporarily suspended social rules we otherwise living by. Beautiful, how rituals allow vulnerability and colors dissolve hierarchy and hesitation.
They know me as the girl who runs, they don’t know me otherwise. I wonder if this disconnect is self-made or inherited over time?
I observed an aunty sitting on the swing and calling everyone to apply Chandan. She seemed to be swinging to her childhood days. I haven’t seen her earlier, so I wonder if our busy lives make proximity different from connection. And the irony is that many a times we don’t know the story of our neighbors’.
Next to the fountain two boys were lost in filling water cups, adding different colors, picking thrown bottles to reuse them and filling ballons. Adding flavors to create their own concoction. Amongst 200 people, they were on their own solo trip. That’s childhood, time to live in your la la land.
Outside the park, a bunch of kids were reluctant to enter the park. I think they weren’t sure if they belonged here or would they be welcomed. With courage they came in and within minutes with colors and water – unrecognizable and all mixed up. For them the festival was an equalizer.
I enjoyed myself sitting in silence and playing with colors, drawing patterns on the floor, and being happy seeing my son play. His smile, a mirror of happiness he shared with his friends.
Everyone was dancing nonstop, surely removing their wall of hesitation to enjoy. The park was full and no one was recognizable, yet we were all playing together, dancing to the Bollywood tunes and standing in the same line for food. This is what happens when we lower our walls.
This Holi shifted something small but meaningful inside me. What wall I want to lower?