Yesterday was Holi and I had a blast.
Lane with shirt torn, covered in dye
I had little idea of what to expect, but as the holiday approached I began to realize that this was a major festival. For about three
weeks now I have watched as piles of sticks and burnables have piled to over ten feet high at crossroads and then a couple of days ago Pralad and Holika showed on on top of the piles. The night before Holi I watched Pralad come off a pile and then Holika go with the bonfire.
On Holi Nandan came up and dressed me in some of his old clothes. He told me that the colors stain and that my clothes would get torn, and I had not caught on to that previously. I read in a newspaper that the colors were sometimes toxic, like the silver is aluminum bromide and the red is mercury sulfate. I did not spread the aluminum on my body like a lot of other people did, and I had severe doubts about playing with mercury and other non-organics, but apparently people have been doing this for a long time. It did give me sneezing fits, but that may just be from dust. I do not know.
I went on the streets with security that Nandan arranged. I always had two minders and even more impressive, Nandan arranged for them to rotate among a pool of about eight over three hours. After everyone was sufficiently colored and with torn clothes we went and danced in the alleys. The alleys here are narrow as I have said before. You run through the maze and hear dance music in the distance, but then when you get to the speakers you realize that they are very loud and that the curvy paths were blocking a lot of sound. Kids in apartments up to the sixth floor poured water on us at least every five minutes. They never got tired of doing that. We kept going until we got tired and then we took a break till we found the next dance alcove. It is an exclusively male pastime; I did not see a girl all day.
Indian houses are a lot like natatoriums in that everything is cement, watertight, and there are drains in every room. Indian decorating habits are sparse to the point of appearing almost non-existant to me as a westerner. I saw the advantage of this at Holi.
We trashed our home with colors. We made the biggest, wettest, staining messes splattering walls, ceilings, and people alike. Then we went to Nandan’s in-law’s house and made the same mess there. Later we went to more relatives, but the wet messes are done for by early afternoon so we brought only dry colors. However, as we walked up five flights of stairs to their apartment, we saw that enough dye had been poured from the top to saturate even the ground floor. The drains apparently were overworked to the point of overflowing.
Nobody is in any hurry to clean anything. Colors do not hurt anything, so why not leave them? But if anyone wants to clean then any room of any home can be hosed without fear of hurting anything.
At night we ate a lot of good food. I would describe it but it would be just easier for me to learn all the names in time and then write about holiday food in general. Most of the treats are milk based and they are killer. I want to learn how to do what they do, because I have never had anything like what they serve.