HOLI IN MY CHILDHOOD

HOLI IN MY CHILDHOOD

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 to enjoy 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,
And 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 Bliss!

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

©Dr. Shankar D Mishra, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India 
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