PLANTS’ PLAINTS

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 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.

Acute poverty would fail to spoil the surging joy inside.

What if there was neither money nor colours

Nor soap to wash at the agonizing end?

An 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 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 soaps

In a victorious hue and cry of glee and fulfillment

I, like a kook, would rub kerosene and 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

By the expensive, cancerous chemical colours;

Devotional fervour by a frantic, savage frolic and fashion;

Curiosity by 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 and platonic Charm!

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

©Shankar D Mishra   06.05.2017

E-mail: shankardmishrapoet@mail.com

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