The Irony of it All...

This past weekend was Holi celebrations in one of our local temples. I love Holi. Loved it for the past few years I have actually celebrated it. I actually did not like it much as a kid. I remember the day in my 11th grade when I was walking home with my friends in all white uniform when some unruly idiots decided to shower us with pink. My friend got some color in her eye and me, much worse, got some on my uniform. I had to face the wrath of my mother. The uniform was soiled for life and it had another year and half to finish off my school with. I hated it. Holi did not belong in Chennai. I was not ready to celebrate it. It looked awesome in Hindi movies but not in real life.

I came to the US, met and fell in love with a person who had lived north of Chennai all his life and had celebrated one too many Holi's. We celebrated with friends, with family, with everyone and I enjoyed it. I was more prepared, old clothes on me, towels in the car, garbage bags to pack the crap, we were ready to taken on the color! We celebrated it in our front yard, in public parks and a few times at the temple. My most memorable Holi was at my in-law's house in Mumbai. We played with colors, got totally messed up for 3 hours. Then we went up, showered, changed and came back down for the most yummiest food ever. Sat down chatting with everyone around.

This year, we were at the temple with friends. My friend motivated me to get off my butt and get colored. It was good fun. There was music, food and crowd. The weather was perfect, hot enough but not scalding yet. We danced, colored, hugged it out and came back home. As I get older, I notice I am not into loud fun as much as I was a year ago.

Today, as my brain monkey was going through my memories from the weekend it remembered that I had told S not to wear shorts as we were going to temple. At the temple though, not literally inside but at the temple grounds they were blaring out Hindi item songs! Ha! My brain monkey laughed at the irony that exists in the Hindu Temple.

Pondering Colorful Art

Holi Hai!

Seriously, I have never celebrated Holi, to this level ever before. The last time I remember doing anything close to Holi was when I warned friends that they cannot put color on my hair, or most of my face other than my forehead and clothes was a strict no-no. In spite of which some of them got some color on my cheek and I promptly played spoil sport. I mean, come on ya, I am a South Indian, what did you expect? Have you ever seen or celebrated anything south Indian with loud music or dance or color? Other than of course the weekly temple loudspeakers that aimed at making people living close to the temple deaf. We believe in doing a Pooja for everything and make every festival as stuffy and boring as possible. Look at our weddings for example and compare it to a Punjabi wedding...thanks, I rest my case.

As we drove to the temple yesterday I recollected to G about my Holi experiences. I had read it in my CBSE Hindi text book at school. I say CBSE because I am sure the State Board Hindi syllabus might have  have gladly omitted such acts of color throwing. I wondered how those hand pumps would look and what people did after all the colorful mess?

Then of course there was the instance of stupid idiots on a bike who threw color on my neatly pressed school uniform. I had no idea who these guys were and I had just finished my plus two boards, literally the last day at school for my entire life, before I started college. I was  walking back with my girl friends (two Northi's and two Southi's) and we were drenched in colors. I had plans for that afternoon, the evening and the night and here I was with oil color on my face and my uniform. "Hell, this is still Tamilnadu," my friends screamed at those guys. I abused them in the newly learned words intermittently spitting out color. I hated Holi because I could not get the colors off my skin and I looked so funny because in Chennai you stuck out like a sore thumb when you went out colorful on Holi because those days only a few people knew about it.

Later, I avoided Holi, the bad experience remained in my head. I was the fussy one who hid and did a drama if anyone came close to me with color. I always wondered how people wanted to get nasty and what a mess it would be at home. I was the Holi snob.

Last year, G convinced me to go to the temple with him to see what was happening. Babs was 2.5 years old and she was just recovering from a mild fever. It had been raining the whole day and when we got there we saw people having fun. There was music, dancing and colors in spite of the downpour. I took a recovering Babs and danced a bit and requested people not to color us because we did not want to get dirty, and shocking! Everyone obliged. So we got out of the temple with just Tikka's on our forehead. I loved it. Just the music and dancing made it worth it. So we decided that we will try and making it in 2011.

And we did. G and I wore an old white tee and jeans, Babs wore her cute but short-now white halter dress. We got there with the colors and met with another friend who had bought water guns with her for the kids. By the time we left the place, we were all unrecognizable. We danced, we sang, the kids played with each other and we had a blast. Babs loved it. She asked me if she could go and play Holi again the next day...Sorry love, you gotta wait another year. But before that we have tons of things to celebrate....like for instance your mother's birthday Tomorrow!!! :)

Happy (Belated) Holi...Finally I let myself go and did not stop anyone when the color came my way and I did not spare anyone either. There was a certain sense of camaraderie, no stranger doused me unless otherwise they did a visual non-verbal permission check. It was fun, if you are in Dallas next year, maybe you should also join us!

Love
ART

PS: Really sad to see Rafa loose to Djokovic in the Indian Wells finals. But then Djoker did play awesomely well and somehow Rafa was just ok...could have been better. Anyways...it is another year of seriously Vamosing for me! and Rafa please do something and get back on track...