It's Holi today and all my friends/family in India are making me jealous by posting their horribly-colored faces, almost inrecognizable pictures on Facebook. This takes me down the memory gulli to my days when I was a part of the 'Baccha-party'. Waking up at 6 am to fill water balloons. I never learnt how to tie it and hence, always used a thread. (Ya ya!!! I suck at a lot of things.)The balcony war would start at about 9ish. Gulshan 1 versus Gulshan 2. I was at a big big advantage coz I lived on Floor 9. Then about 10ish, equipped with a bucketful of balloons, a couple of pouches of dark red, purple or green color, and a few odd pichkaris amongst ourselves, we would head out to greet our allies (read the building boys)on the ground. What ensued was a lot of running, scurrying, hiding, and screaming. Our faces were beyond recognition and mom would not let us enter the house till she had covered the route uptil the bathroom with some towels so as to not spoil the precious floor. The maid had already done the jaadu-fatka yaar ;). And I would love when inspite of some severe scrubbing, the color wouldn't leave some part of the face, especially the earlobes, remember?
That was holi then. Now, we wait until the weekend to celebrate a 'Holi party' in a carpeted hall with mirrored walls, hence no gulaal and pichkaris. We carefully select the face paints (FDA approved, 'safe-on-skin' labeled) and then proceed to blush our faces with different hues of the primary palette. Nevertheless, it still very much is fun. To dip our hands in color and leave no friend clean and nice, its enthralling. It's bringing the childhood, that was hiding behind our adulthood/parenthood, to its wake and re-live its joy - the colorful, vibrant, glowing joy.
We combine this with performances, dance and/or skits, not only for our children to get a splash into our culture and the story behind Holi, but also for us, to get out of our inhibitions and mundane lives and sparkle it with the excitement as well as fringe it with the nervous butterflies.
But as we, in US of A, try hard to celebrate Holi the 'good ole' way, as much as we can, I have heard India, has advanced to a level that seems 'too modern' enough to give us a culture-shock. I am hearing of 'Dora'and 'Spiderman' pichkaris, robot-shaped water guns, color spray cans, organic and herbal gulaals, and wait, it gets better.......water-slide rentals for the garden parties, beer showers, vodka lassis, tequilla pani-puris, dholis from Rajasthan, etc etc. Cool, huh???
I wouldn't want to comment on whether it's taking the tradition out of the festival. Times change, and new ideas will definitely 'pour' in. As long as you keep the spirit of 'brotherhood' alive while you soak yourself with the fancy fuggas, Holi will live on!!!
Wish you all a very happy Holi!
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