When I was growing up in Ranchi, holi meant a riot of colours. It meant, painting the town red, green and pink, literally! Every year, we tried to be the 1st one to be up early and appear at our friends’ doors all prepared to splash randomly at the ‘canvas’ who made the mistake of answering the door without looking through the peep hole. And if the ‘loser’ sent his/her parents to answer the door we would instantly wear our masks of innocence…which they would fall for. They would invite us in and settle us down with the hope that these good kids have come to sort out some math problem even on a holiday forgetting for a moment forgetting it was ‘HOLI-day’. And then, when the ‘loser’ appeared he/she would be in more trouble than we had planned to put him/her in…cause we would start off the painting in the neat/prim settings of the living room and not the already colorful staircase! I learnt more of ‘1st mover advantage’, planning, scheming, strategizing, SWOTs playing holi than I learnt sitting in a classroom in b-school. Now I don’t recall why we cared to be the 1st one to strike. At the end of the day, we all looked alike anyway!
After a couple of hours playing with each other, we would just hang around the building and strike at new comers and scamper away at the sight of the rowdies coming on bikes with permanent paint and water balloons. The slowest among the lot would be the victim of the external attack and at times wail and cry at being left alone and not being big enough to fight back. When we were sure the rowdies had left our area, we would appear out of our hiding places and console our shaken up comrade. We had the choice of heading back to the safety of our homes…but we stayed there in the field as if to show respect to some pact that we had signed with someone….till all of us inevitably got caught atleast once! Then we would reluctantly head back home…to be scolded at for looking like a badly painted kathakali dancer. (As if it was my fault! ;)
This holi, we ventured out in Bangalore. We did not see any of the outlandish fun that we have witnessed in the north but in its truly cosmopolitan spirit, Bangalore participated and made available the paints, brush, palette et al. All the holi enthusiasts had to do was go make a canvas out of their unsuspecting friends!
1 comment:
It was real fun using C's torso as a canvas and trying to neatly spare his face so that he can go face his Japanese customers... :D
Post a Comment