Holi

 Holi! How to understand it? Well, two major trends seem to emerge. The first one is the environmental. As per this ideation, the festival stands for the imminent arrival of the spring, and the end of the trailing winter. In a way, the folk festival is like the burning of the old logwood, and getting ready for the new. The old leaves are shed, the rotten branches are deadwood. Nature blooms with new leaves and fresh colours of flowers that would fructify by the summer.

There is another story, too. It starts with the different mythologies. It would refer to the very many she-demons from the Prahlad story, from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana epics, and how/why these demonesses troubled all, and how they were subdued so that order prevails. 

If the environmental version is more lyrical in tone (lots of (semi-)poetry gets quoted in this quasi- literary presentation), the mythological portrayal is ethical in tone to the tune that the festival symbolises the win, the victory of the good over the evil. 

Both these chronicles are tales by now told umpteen times. Do not you believe me? Well, go through a decade or two of newspaper articles, wapp messages, videos, and what have you, it would have to be either of these stories.Why, i suppose, newspaper desk editors (especially, the feature desk) and the RJ's would be sprucing up their own decades old spiel, like the songs that would tomorrow holler the whole day, with 'Sholay' to 'Silsila', via the 'yeh jawani' that is 'diwani'!

In other words, why are responses getting obviously typical? Why is everybody so obsessed with sounding the very correct note? Well, things are changing real fast, at a break-neck speed everywhere, and in every field of human endeavour. Why the repeat performance of the old records yet again?

 May be, because it provides a sense of security in wor(l)ds spinning with dizzying changes? Or because there is a wariness about communication, about each other, and hence the need to be politically correct, and to tell the safe, time-tested tales? 

Well, is not it the time to toss away the tales told since the nineties? Time to find new meanings, novel answers, pose different questions that would flare up the flames of our intellects, our imaginations, our ideations, our very beings?

Pratima@ As for me, at the personal level, nothing can change the symbolism of Aai's birth date, tithi wise, being the Holi. She never held grudges. Instead, she always chose to make oneself better. Burn up grudges (the bad 'karma' of the wrong-doers would come back to them to haunt them for harassment they inflicted!) and burnish anew hence is the forever holy Holi theme for me!

Yet another notion that now is associated with Holi is the way her favourite niece (Aai liked all of them very much. May be, a softer corner for Arundhati!) passed away on the Holi day last year. Actually, none has any control over death or birth. Yet such occurences tell the tales of affinities beyond bounds for sure!