SEEMA MUNIZ recalls the many wild Holi celebrations that she had witnessed in her childhood and recalls inebriated neighbours, high on bhaang and booze, and children playing with several chemical colours and wet balloons
The waning fragrance of cestrum nocturnum, raat ki raani, has sensuously wrapped itself around the morning.
“Happy Holi”, my ever-zealous 82-year-old mom greets with a shower of flaming red hibiscus petals. A shower of flowers is the new, preferred, civilised way of playing Holi in our family, a far cry from the customary hurling of water balloons or bucketful of coloured chemical solution the way I remember it from my childhood. I can’t help but smile. The babblers start their cacophonous chant. I too get some bougainvillea blossoms and colour Mom’s bright smile with them.
My WhatsApp is overflowing with Happy Holi messages. I have never been crazy about this particular festival, even though it represents the best of spring, the victory of truth over evil and the Lila of Divine Love. My recollection of Holi takes me to the comforting morsel of darkness under my father’s bed where I hid from the hooliganism of the festival: loud knocks, people dancing on the streets, either intoxicated by moonshine or high on bhaang, their faces smeared in purple and red. I also recall my sister howling as our parents stepped out of their dignified roles of exemplary grown-ups to splotch each other with wild colours….
“Please stop fighting,” she beseeched them, and they obliged. Some neighbours, quite wasted and smelling of cheap liquor, barged in and smashed our sink. There was even a splatter of blood as the device came down with a thud.
Looking back now, I certainly felt a kind of terror at these sudden, annual bursts of insanity. An innocent soul left in shock at the lunacy of adults in the festive warzone, wondering why…. Thankfully, to date, my curiosity has remained intact, locked away somewhere under the deep layers of striatum. I pick up my phone and google the etymology of Holi. The answer is not any different from the one I have always known:
The name “Holi,” a Hindu festival, originates from the Sanskrit word “Holikā,” which refers to the demoness Holika, whose story is central to the festival’s symbolism of good triumphing over evil.
Still nothing to justify the sheer anarchy associated with its celebration. So, I google the etymology of Holika:
Holika was a demoness who was killed on the day of Holi. She was the sister of King Hiranyakashipu.
Interestingly, yet another meaning of Holika pops up under the extensive wisdomlib.org website: a house lizard. The source is Yates Sanskrit-English dictionary. (I have a few of them clambering up our walls, snapping up little beasties like spiders and mosquitoes.)
As I grew older, it became harder to escape the revelry disseminated by this pageantry of colours, which has since enthralled many a foreign dignitary including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. One Holi, I found myself in the midst of a familiar crowd where everyone flaunted a carte blanche to harass, pester and pull me in into the vortex of a diabolic nonchalance. Soon, every inch of my face and arms were covered with a mix of coloured chemicals. Try as I might, I could not get rid of it. The next day, with eyes warbled behind an ominous pall of indistinguishable splodge, I walked into the office looking like a living masterpiece of contemporary art. My boss took it in his stride as he jocularly commented, “We should have been shooting a colour ad today, what an opportunity missed…!”
The house lizard tuts for no particular reason except to announce its presence.
Seema Muniz, a feature writer with the Times of India group in the nineties, is an avid reader and educationist, who homeschooled her son until tenth grade, while drifting between New York and Alaska with her family. She is also an artist, with a few solo and group shows in Albany, NY, to her credit.
Photo: AI-generated image
