Holi is हो ली (HO+LI)

Among the many memories of several festivals I enjoyed during my childhood days in Gujarat and Delhi, I very fondly remember the festivals of Diwali and Holi.

Since the Holi festive fever is just weeks ahead, I am naturally levitating towards this amazing festival of colors. Days before Holi arrives, children start planning as to which colors to buy and how much, making sure that our stock does not fall short in quantity. Quality of the stock came into picture much later when we were mature enough to understand the effects some colors may have on our teenage skin, the harm some colors might cause or the need to be aware enough to buy skin-friendly colors. We would also make concrete plans on how to go about dousing innocent souls in our colors while simultaneously making plans to escape from the colorful plans of our so-called frenemies in this game of Holi. The right equipment like the pichkaari (sprayer), balloons, buckets, mugs, and the like would be procured via arrangements between friend groups and exchanges would happen in case we did not have an item and our parents refused to shell out more bucks for the Holi shopping.

Frankly and honestly speaking, the actual cultural or traditional significance of this festival was given no particular importance while making the plans or even while thinking about the festival. But that was when I was in Standard 2nd, 3rd and 4th. Later on from Standard 5 onwards, I started listening to what the elders had to say about the colorful festival, and from Standard 8 onwards, I was quite interested and fascinated by the story of Holika and why we celebrate this festival. I also started enjoying the Holika Dahan (chotti Holi), a night before the actual Holi, when all the neighbors would gather in the street and light a bonfire symbolizing the victory of good over evil as well as the removal of the old and arrival of the new. It would be the right weather for all these celebrations including being drenched fully in water. Around the time of Holi, the winter season would have bid farewell while summer was not on the horizon, just the right weather of spring for us to come out and enjoy singing and dancing around the fire with some food items like wheat, peas, linseed and coconut being tossed into the bonfire. These baked items were considered good for health as well. This was usually the season for mustard fields to be in full bloom of yellow. So almost all homes would emanate the lovely fragrance of सरसों का साग (sarson ka saag) and मकई की रोटी (makkai ki roti), the festive delicacies. Aah, what a lip-smacking memory😋

Then we waited for the next day when all our plans and preparations of the past few weeks would be out on display. We used to get dressed in our kind of shabby yet decent and 'presentable-to-our-friends' clothes and go around homes with trayful of different colors to be respectfully applied on parents of our friends and other elderly neighbors and senior children who refused to play the game. As I grew older, I myself stopped this full-on Holi experience and would just get some dash of color when the younger kids around the block would come knock on our doors. How I wish we all could remain young whereby no inhibitions cloud our decisions.

By the way, the manner in which this festival is shown in movies whereby the characters would come out in full white to participate in the festival is quite over-rated because, in reality, no one wanted to get their full white clothes colored in different shades but ya there were times when we did dare to go in our whites and kept those clothes to be worn next year as well but by then we had outgrown those colored whites and learned the much valuable lesson of never to bring movies into real life😆

Once the official opening of the festival has been kicked-off, we would go all out to drench our friends with colorful sprays of water, firstly using our pichkaaris and then with mugfull of colored water from the already-filled buckets. We used to run, scream, duck, shout, complain, accuse, hide & seek, and just have lots of fun. After all that colorful fun, we would run to the terrace and start spraying water on the passersby. What gave us more joy was aiming the balloons which would hit and splash on the people down below. They would look up sternly and we would happily shout "बुरा ना मानो, होली हौ।" (Bura na mano, Holi hai!) which meant, "Don't take offense, its Holi". The most satisfying sight was when someone who was dry, gets completely drenched in color thanks to our splashes of water. There were times when I also got the bitter-sweet taste of getting hit by filled-in balloons. I must say some concepts of science were practically understood during such times. I learnt that the distance and speed of an object when thrown had a solid impact on the person towards whom it's directed.😩Despite those lessons of science, I have always treasured all the other fun moments I had during this festival.

At around noon, the enthusiasm would diminish and everyone would slowly return to their homes. That was another hilarious moment because our parents would not recognize us at all and we would sometimes trick them. There was also a time when my younger brother came back from his full-on Holi look and I didn't let him in the house as I had my doubts that he was not "him" but someone else and I was told not to let any intruders in! He had to literally prove to me that he was a member of our family before I formally allowed him inside our house😁

In Delhi, the water supply used to come only for a few hours in the morning and a few hours in the evening and it was indeed a luxury to get to bath in running water as most of the other times we had to use the stored water. So on the day of Holi, we felt blessed to get this direct supply of tap water in the afternoon. The sound of the tap running would give us such joy and that magic would happen around 12 for everyone to wash themselves up to a recognizable format! That was a task in itself because the colors did not usually rub off that easily. Elders would advise us to dab some oil before starting the color mania but children are children and we never paid any heed to such experts and later realized our folly only to repeat it next year as well😅 Anyways, we would bath/shower and try to take off the colors as best as we could. Although we managed to get most of the colors off, still around 5 to 10 percent would remain and we would proudly let it remain for the next day to show-off to our classmates and friends how much fun we had in the festival of Holi🤗

It was much later, that I realized the spiritual meaning of 'Holi'. It can be understood by breaking the word into 'Ho + Li' which literally means, 'It's already occured' meaning, what has happened has happened and there is no worth in pondering over it. We need to apply the Power to Pack-up in order to continue this journey of life in peace and with an awareness that one can only grow when one looks ahead while appreciating the present which is a gift to us. Yes, you may walk down memory lane to cherish some beautiful memories and to learn some valuable lessons from the past follies, but one should try not to stay in the past as there is no particular benefit in it. The power to pack-up helps us to put a dot on our past and to have a fresh, positive and powerful mind-set.

Let's all have a colorful "Ho-li" whereby when we do look back, all that we find are some beautiful peaceful colorful and pure experiences and life-events to be cherished.