BY GAURI KIROLIKAR 

 

 

THE festival of colours, festival of joy Holi is on it’s way. Each one of us might be having good or bad memories with every festival. Holi being a festival of colours is celebrated using colours of various types, ‘pakka one’ ‘kutcha one’ ( permanent and temporary). And as in all festivals, there are numerous stories of how and why the festival is being commemorated. Holi is usually celebrated for two days, where on the first day, ‘holika dahan’ is done and next day we play with colours. The story behind ‘holika dahan’ as Holika the aunt of Prahlad and sister of Hiranyakashyap was assigned to kill Prahlad by having him sit on her lap and then being consumed by fire. Holika as was blessed to be invulnerable from fire and thus she was confident that she would come out untouched and Prahlad will burn to ashes. But the opposite happened ,which signifies the victory of truth over evil. So very inspiring. For the same we also have ‘holika dahan’ in our neighbourhood. Next day is the Holi day. All of us might be in one way or other following the similar chronology. How have we changed, evolved doing so? When the ‘Holika dahan’ is done, does the evil or the bad inside us perish? Do we actually burn the evil feeling for someone? Yes or No.

 

Next day when Dhulivandan is played with colours - the story of Lord Krishna is again told to us that - Lord Krishna enjoyed playing colours with His friends and Gopikas and Radhaji. The purpose might be to forget everything and just get yourself indulged in the colours of love, companionship and just cherish the moments. How is Holi of today? Is the enjoyment the same as depicted in the stories. Post Holi celebrations we get to read stories of crime, fights, and torture to animals and what not. Where is the pure fun? Where has it gone? It seems this festival in particular has become an occasion to just be wild and worst at the same time. Whereas the purpose is not so. At some places Holi has become a day to take a revenge from past, or to use animals as some means of taking out your anger or frustration. At many places we can see dogs and cows being coloured.

 

Of course this is not generalised but then it cannot be ignored as well. I remember when I was a kid, me and my siblings used to run here and there with colours and the whole day we used to play colours and be happy while having all the delicacies our mother used to make. My father used to play ‘hori geet’ sung by variety of local singers which made the atmosphere full of fun. No show off, nothing, only pure enjoyment with whatever little we had. Now with the advent of social media and mobile phones. Life has become like some presentation where are all trying to look happy rather than being happy, to get validation from everyone. This Holi let’s make it a point to burn all the grudges, complaints, feeling of enmity we have for others and next day enjoy fully and get ourselves drenched in the beautiful and permanent colours of joy love and companionship, which will never go off our faces, and wash off all the temporary colours of hatred, jealousy, anxiety. Happy Holi!!