HOLI IN MY LIFE

HOLI IN MY LIFE

Ah! About three odd decades ago

Holi did use to come

With a gushing gusto

Flushing curiosity and swelling enthusiasm!

During those bluff, innocuous childhood days of innocence,

It would start after the customary, auspicious Dola Parv (Festival)

Of Devi (Goddess) Radha and Lord Krishna

On the Full-Moon Day of the early March.

Deities with a devotional fervour

And rhythmic, melodious and resonant musical pomp,

Would be escorted from the Temple on a decorated Chariot,

On to the village Dola Mandap

Where they would be placed on a wooden swing,

Adorned with new gorgeous costumes,

Sprinkled with varied hued Avir (Gulal),

Endowed with the glittering flower garlands,

Flashy ornaments and bunches of green mangoes:

----- A unique prevailing Odia usage;

Mangoes are restricted to be relished,

Until they are offered to the Deities on this sacred day.

With sincere Pooja as per the Vedic rituals.

Like other children of my age,

I would be raptly awaiting the next delaying dawn,

To complete the morning chores in a jiffy

And get braced up for enjoying Holi.

Ah! My acute poverty would fail to suppress the surging and infinite joy inside,

What if there was neither money nor colours

Nor soap to cleanse the spots at the agonizing end?

Oh! The intense yearning for being coloured or sprinkled,

Would drag us to smear one another

With the black and silky oiled-soots from the kitchen,

Or, the black greasy substance

From the over-used axle oil of the wooden carts,

Rowed on the dusty village street,

Or, the burnt engine oil of the water pumps;

Like a stiff-necked tramp,

Unmindful of the imminent beckoning

Of the pain, pang and humiliating bath

On the huddling, boisterous village pond steps,

Where others would flush and wash with varied scented soaps,

In a victorious hue and cry of glee and fulfillment!

Alas! I, like a kook, would rub lamp kerosene and the pond bed sand,

Against the cuddly, shy skin in a huff,

Scared of returning my wretched, forlorn home,

To confront the tortured, furious widowed-mother,

With a nervous, anxious and quasi-monkey face,

And a scrubbed, red and ashamed contour!

Still there was a rare, special and delicious Charm in Holi!

Alas! With the passage of the kaleidoscopic Time,

Many changes have rushed in:

Thank God! The grinding poverty has fled away.

Kitchen soots, cart-axle grease,

Or, burnt engine oil have been replaced

with the expensive, cancerous chemical colours;

Devotional fervour with a frantic, savage frolic and fashion;

Curiosity with anxiety;

A sound health by an allergic cold;

Blue ribbons, kudos and recognitions

Have taken the place of the blushing affront,

Fear is almost estranged,

Childhood innocence has grown into wanton cares and complexities......!

Really, today everything is there in Holi

Except for that bygone, perpetual Joy and platonic Charm!

*Kook – a person who is mad, foolish, or eccentric and amoral.

©Shankar D Mishra   02.03.2018

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