HOLI hai Bhai HOLI hai

HOLI ... the festival of colours and brings back so many memories. Of all the things I miss here in "Hell Hole", the biggest one is my inability to enjoy Holi with my nephews, sis and Atul back home. Though jiza is a spoil sport and Yash doesn’t like playing Holi I still miss being there with them during this wonderful wonderful festival. This festival is of great significance for me, I enjoyed Holi with my dad, "pappa" as I affectionately called him. We enjoyed this festival second only to Diwali. For me there were three distinct phases of Holi.

First there was when I was in school, standard 5th to the 9th. Holi fever for me would start days in advance with my constant cribbing for a new "pichkari". I had a good working one from previous year but every year something new and cool would come in the market and I would want those. Then going out with pappa to get the different packets of balloons and colours. There used to the red, blue, green packet of balloons and then the white ones. And usually pappa got me gulal and a couple of packets of purple and green colours. On the day of Holi, I still remember not being able to sleep all night in anticipation of the festival and the things I had planned to do. Pappa would get up very early, around 4am, and start filling up the balloons with water. I was so useless, I would just sit there and hand him the balloons and then take every single one of them and place them in a bucket of water. After this he would start filling the white balloons with coloured water. These were my favourites. We used to done only by around 7-8am. Pappa would be exhausted after this but every single year he would do this for me and I enjoyed the ritual. I enjoyed spending the time with him which I realize only now was priceless.

Holi started with putting gulal on pappa and mummy, and then heading out to play Holi with my friends from the neighbouring building. We started out with throwing balloons on one another. Then we would go to the terrace and have balloon fights with the kids from the other buildings. After all the balloons were done then we played with the colours and the gulal. Occasionally we would throw each other in the pool of muddy water that was formed. After coming down from the terrace we would ask people in the building to throw buckets of water from their houses. Ooh that was so much fun. Soaked in colours, water, mud I would come back home around noon time for some food. Then after lunch head back out to play some cricket with my friends. Yep cricket is an integral part of Holi. Once we made the mistake of throwing a packet of gulal in the water tank of the building. Everyone got red water that day and that’s when we were prohibited from ever playing Holi on the terrace ;)

Then there was the college time, in Bhavans and DJ. Holi changed for me while in Junior college. I used to play with colours only with my friends from the building and head out to Atul's place in Andheri. Yep in spite of having colours all over me I would take the train and then the bus to reach Atul's place in Vijaynagar, Marol. The ride was so amusing, I used to see people in all different colours, some in red, some in green and blue, the worst ones in Silver. But that was all in the spirit of the festival. Anyways after reaching Atul's place we used to play Holi for sometime before heading out to play Cricket. Though I didn’t play too often, cricket in Vijaynagar was always rocking; there was an incident when Neha and Swapna were invited to Atul's place a couple of days after Holi. Knowing how much Neha disliked Holi colours me and Atul decided to now throw colours on her, but instead throw it on Swapna. Alas fate had something else in store and instead of Swapna, Neha got gulal all over her. Me and Atul were terrified and were afraid of the consequences, but thankfully Neha took it very sportingly. Till date she doesn’t believe me that it was an accident and that we never intended to throw colours on her.

And finally the last stage was Holi here in "Hell Hole". Nothing to write about except the last year when I, Neha and a couple of other friends went to a small gathering of people enjoying Holi. We played with colours and the best part was there was a DJ who was playing some of my favourite Holi songs and every third song was Rang Barse. I never thought I would enjoy Holi with Neha and with colours. But it rocked. The best Holi in like 5 years. And now in 2009 there are no parties, no place we can go to celebrate this wonderful festival.

My only regret is I never got a chance to play Holi was my sis; she might be a spoil sport when it comes to Holi but I know she would never say No to me. So Jiza here's hoping that I get a chance to throw gulal and enjoy Holi with you soon.