Changing colors of Holi

"Maari pichkaari yara foorrrrrr..." he he..yup its that time of the year when colors are their splashiest best, taking their full form, ready to barge on whoever comes into their way, especially targeting the wet cholis and dupattas and saying "Bura na mano, holi hai" as pointed by a newspaper, and that too, in Bollywood ishtyle.

Its the fun-filled festival when people celebrate with colors and waters and play with maddo acts when bhang dancing on their heads and they who knows dancing where and putting and spreading hands and legs in which direction and what they do. Totally unabashed of the dos and don't s, its a care free festival, when you can do whatever you want. After all, its the celebration of the win of good over evil, as all festivals do, but with customs of its own.

And when a festival comes, no matter what, suddenly there starts a research of whats the reason of celebrating the festivals, and the dearest victims of this research are students. Just ask one to write an essay and they would come up with the story of Hiranyakashyap, Prahlad and Holika.(btw, poor students, exams always round the corner during holi time!!).Hmmmm.. So as most of you would know, I would not like to repeat the same old story and narration, rather, depict my interpretation of it and what actually Holi means. And how symbolic gestures are turned into self-convenient ways of reasoning and partying on drop of a hat.


With changing times, people change and so does the color of the society, then why shall the colors of this festival of colors not change?!!
I just woke up this morning with "dhachik dhachik dhig chag dhakchik" going on from all directions that exist, echoing with decibels high enough to murder someone. If my Dadi was alive I'm sure she would've died of heart attack today!!! Goodness, you call it Holi celebration??? Its no more than a disco party, celebrated with colors, an indianized version of disco-dallying to flirt around and a chance to get drunk in public and do as you feel like. Today's Holi celebration are synonymous with, rain-dancing, disco-dallying and getting talli to flirt around.

And all this in the name of celebrating a festival, which signifies the win of good over evil, sorry to say, but I guess the evil has already made its comeback in our form!! I am not against the celebration, but everything has its limits and ways to do. Tonnes of water wasted for rain dance, just for few hours of "Celebration" and noise pollution no less than a terrorist attack is not a "Festival celebration" yaar. Its like after raping someone, the rapist says, I was just celebrating!!!

I highly condemn this attitude of people!!

To me Holi, the day when we lit the holy fire, represents the end of the bad spirits and that's not just "Holika dahan" its the dahan of all our evil spirits that we should put into that fire and never look back. The next day is "Rang panchmi" signifying the celebration of this new birth, the new high of spirit and here doesn't mean you get talli and be high on spirits. Its when you are spiritually higher, feel light and are in bliss to celebrate. Colors signify our personalities. Each one of us is a unique color, we should learn to share and accepts each others colors and that's when we all are equal, here it doesn't mean a boss playing with colors with his peon, but the soul-consciousness, brings us to equal level as we all are nothing but souls, all equal in front of God, his children. And we need no noise to declare this, we can do it with peace or with a love-filled hug with our fellow brothers, sisters and loved-ones. Why do we need such loud noise to express happiness?? May be be because the mankind is turning deaf to the speech of real Happiness and peace. Aah,,,see, even now I can hear this song playing in the background..."Dekha jo tujhe yaar, dil mein baji guitar"!!! Duh!!!

Amidst all this, even I am feeling extremely terrible spiritually !! I wish I could be strong enough spiritually and play with this colors of Life. I wish I can really celebrate Holi. I hope with time, even the existing colors change and people know the reality, leaving behind this naive attitude and mirage of pleasure and celebration!!