Holi Festival on 11th March

Devang Vibhakar

Yes, Holi is coming on 11th March, 2009 on a fine Wednesday. A most awaiting favorite Indian festival of mine. Holi is such a holy festival for me when I forget everything else and play with colors starting from morning.

I remember, during my childhood in village, we used to play with mud. How messy we used to be then. No limitations at all, and no obligations either. Holi is the only day when no one feels bad if you apply color on them. Playing with colors rather means sharing happiness with someone. And who doesn’t like happiness? So nobody objects.

Above photo represents Holi 2008. My face has almost every color available from RAINBOW. Red, Blue, Yellow, Green are my favorite colors. Now what I do is, bring packets of colors, mix it with water and then play.

I have this 5 years kid living in next house to me. Now for every Kid, Holi is the greatest Festival. They can’t sleep the other night and keep dreaming of next morning when they will be allowed to play with colors with their kid friends.

So, this kid awaits for me to come out, and as I leave my home, he is ready with his colors and spreads color all over my face and body. He just enjoys it, and I do enjoy it as much as he does. What a simple way of expressing feelings!

Bollywood has many songs featuring Holi. Famous one is from movie Sholay – Holi ke din dil khil jate hai…

Saffron Coloured flowers known as ‘Kesuda‘ are used to make colors from. Flowers are put in a vessel full of water the other night before Holi, and at the morning, water becomes all Saffron coloured. Even today in villages, people play with color made from Kesuda. I saw many Kesuda trees when I visited Satadhar last month. They looked so beautiful.

The worst thing about Holi is removing colors at the end of the day, or mostly afternoon. Those readymade colors are so strong that, they can not be removed from our skin after one bath. Rubbing face strongly even doesn’t help. They keep shining over there as a proof of Holi we played.

Last year I had this humorous tragedy! At 01:30 pm, when everybody stopped playing, I thought of taking bath. Well, as this is a special bath which requires exercise of removing color signs from our skin, it almost takes over half an hour. By applying hot water, I succeeded 75% in removing colors from my skin. It was a tough exercise. There were no sounds of people playing Holi. Everyone seemed at ease. So I thought, this is it. But I was wrong. My teenage cousins, Pratik and Siddharth came from nowhere at 02:15. Now, I had come just having bath and was cleaning my hair. I saw both of my cousins, and I could see mischievous intentions in their eyes. They were asking me to come out so we can play Holi. I requested them with thousand prayers saying “Listen, I just had bath and still color is on my face. What you can do is, just apply little color on my face so that you feel you played Holi with me.”

But who would listen to requests on the day of Holi! They forced me to wear old clothes (yeah, old clothes are on high demand on Holi!). I went out, and played again with them.

They had this balloons having colors filled inside, which they threw all over me as I came out of my home. They rubbed color on my face, my hair and all over.

Again, I was colored! I too, tried my best to make sure their faces don’t remain recognizable!!

After all this, I had to again take a hard bath. That is only tiresome job I hate to do on Holi. But it stands no where near to that enjoyment that I receive by playing Holi. Truly, Holi is my favorite Indian Festival. And awaiting for the same, which is next week!

I wish all of you a very Happy Holi. Enjoy it fully. And share your experiences here.