Then there would be this one day every year
– when I would just suddenly notice the arrival of the spring. It would be
there in the breeze, in the trees and in the blooming of flowers, in the colour
of the sky, and even if the transition from winter to spring must have been
gradual – but the realization was always sudden.
The spring is here! And then I would jump up again – spring
meant holi had come, too!
****
I just loved holi – the food, the
colours, the water pistols and balloons, the ritual of burning called nyara
pora (symbolic burning of Holika, the demoness) just a day before holi
– it was my favourite festival. But things changed as I grew up. In the later
years, I had board exams coinciding with holi, and in college I would
not be so enthusiastic about it, often escaping the mad rush of celebrations.
The spirit of holi eventually deserted me as I single-mindedly embarked
on the journey called career.
I had a lot of crazy holi
experiences. Maybe some of them will someday become stories I would want to
tell. However, real stories of holi, or dol as we Bengalis call
it, are the stories my mother told me when I was a kid. Those stories define
the festival for me.
****
My mother was the fourth one amongst five
siblings – and my grandfather was a social worker and headmaster in a village
school. My grandfather had an interesting history – he came from Faridpur
district, which is now a part of Bangladesh, to Kolkata in the second decade of
the twentieth century and joined the swadeshi movement. Soon, he turned ascetic
and joined the Ramakrishna Mission as a bramhachary - an apprentice
monk. When it was time for him to be inducted into the order of the monks, his
guru asked him to seek permission from his mother as a pre-condition. The
mother refused permission – which meant my grandfather could not become a monk.
Instead – he married and took up social work with a zest. He travelled to the farthest
villages, often working for the Ramakrishna Mission. He established the now
flourishing the Ramakrishna Mission in Purnia district of Bihar. Later, he
would settle down in a small village in the non-descript South Dinajpur district
in North Bengal – where he would be given a parcel of land by the local zamindar
in lieu of building a primary school
****
My mother and her siblings never played
with the colours when they were kids – because their father never approved of
it. According to him, dol was a holy occasion for introspection and not
for going crazy with colours or other indulgence. Neighbourhood boys and girls would
come calling to their house – but they were only allowed to put ‘abir’–
dry coloured powder, called ‘faag’ elsewhere in India - on the feet of
the elders at home and touch a bit of the colour on the forehead of all the
kids.
So no playing with colours, no water
balloons or water pistols! Their holi was made special by something else
altogether. I am coming to that in a bit.
****
The practice of holi orginates from
Vrindavan, where Krishna used to play holi with his gopikas. We dare say
the institution of holi itself was not exactly started by Krishna, and
it perhaps already existed. We can still presume that charming and innovative
Krishna took the festival to new heights. It was a festival of love, a festival
of colours, sweets, dancing and singing. In the middle of spring, this
definitely sounds like a mating festival, an opportunity for youngsters to find
and express love – just the same as many tribes around the world practice. Was
it a unique practice to the tribe of Yadavs? I have no idea – but at least in
modern day India – holi is a cultural universal. However, it is practiced
with the nuances of each place and people – and probably no two places practice
it in the exact same way.
****
All the Bengalis are divided between two
camps. The Shakto folk who worship the Shakti – goddesses such as Durga
and Kali in one hand and the Vaishnavs - worshippers of Krishna on the
other. The Shakto people were culturally dominant for a long time in Bengal.
Then came along Sri Chaitanya - the social reformer who was also the inventor
of the Hare Krishna dance accompanied by chanting – called Kirtan.
He transformed religion into a cause for celebration – a mass participation
never seen before. Thousands of people – enough to scare the army of the
erstwhile nawab - would be dancing and chanting along with him on the
road. He reformed how holi was played in Bangla too. With his influence,
the new tweaked version of the festival of holi was soon spreading far
and wide in Bengal
****
According to Sri Chaitanya’s formula, holi,
called dol in Bengal, was now to be played over 3 days. The first
day was for playing with dry colour. Dry colour is easy to get rid of – so
playing with it was a symbol of transience and the temporal nature of human experience.
Then on the second day people would play with wet colours – colour that leaves
a mark on clothes and faces and skin. The experience will leave many marks. At
that time, very limited number of colours were available to play with – but the
colour was important. And finally, on the third day, they would play with soil
and clay – a reminder that our external situation can not affect our internal
beings. The soil on our clothes and our body can not dirty the mind and soul.
This was Sri Chaitanya’s brand of experiential learning. Playing holi
was to be accompanied by continuous chants of Hare Krishna and dancing.
Much of this soon became a part of the life
of the hype loving Bengali – irrespective of whether they are Vaishnav or
Shakto. Still, dol is played with much more gusto for three days in
North Bengal where more Vaishnavs live, as opposed to the South Bengal which
has fewer Vaishnavs historically. In Kolkata and most of South Bengal, dol
is to be played only for one day, not three.
****
The countdown for holi always
started with collecting things to burn during the ‘nyara pora’ – where
you burned all the dry leaves, wasted small pieces of timber or anything that
is garbage and will possibly burn (not plastic of course). On the evening prior
to the holi day, we’ll make a huge pile out of all of that and set fire
to it.
Fire making is an art after all – those who
have camping experience would know about this. Also, we collected the burning
material for days – and all that will be burnt in a matter of minutes. We used
to watch the fire rise high before it slowly dies down, and then would go home
with a strangely heavy heart.
In one particular year, the holi was
just a few days after the general election. As soon as the election was over,
we were quick to tear down the posters, flyers etc and piled everything under
the staircase in the building where I lived. The next day, a snake chose the
pile of papers as its nest. I don’t know who exactly drove away the snake, but
we got our pile back before the eve of holi in time for the fire ritual.
While picking up the stuff from under the staircase however, we were quite
scared and were almost getting goose bumps imagining that a snake may surface
out of the pile of papers without warning.
****
One is supposed to place a potato in the
nyarapora bonfire before lighting it – and then supposed to eat that potato
when the fire goes out. However, we never managed to cook the potato
sufficiently to eat when we lit the ‘nyara pora’. My mother will take
the potato home and burn it on a gas burner – and then laugh at us kids when we
excitedly ate the potato with some salt.
****
My mother’s stories were far more eventful.
Once on the day of holi, when she was a toddler, somehow she managed to
evade everyone’s attention and went to the cow-shed. In the cow-shed, there was
this cow called Lali. Lali had a reputation due to a history of terrorizing people
and even attacking them with her horn even without any provocation. When people
found my mother standing under the cow and holding her udders trying to copy
the milking action she had seen earlier, everyone gave up hope of getting her
back alive. No one even dared to go anywhere close to the cow – she would
threaten with her horns if anyone tried to go anywhere near her. My mother was,
however, standing or sitting under Lali for 3 hours without incident – at which
point my grandfather arrived and managed to retrieve her (Lali was fond of the
master and allowed him to come near her). That’s how my mother survived a holi
that her family and the neighbours thought she would not survive. Later on in
life, my mother showed an amazing ability to easily befriend animals on the
first encounter.
****
The holi lunch can be an exquisite and
tempting affair. It was more so in the old days. Imagine the thrill of a holi
lunch in an era when there was no access to restaurants, and cuisines from
several continents as we know today – especially in a village in North Bengal
in the 1960s. For Bengalis, cholar daal, more commonly known as chana
in other parts, happens to be delicacy, often served with luchi (puri,
flatbreads fried in oil or ghee). Why is such a dish which is available
in common places these days, was considered to be a traditional delicacy?
In those days, when there was no microwave,
gas stove or even kerosene stove, cooking was done on fire created from timber,
cow dung, fire wood and on great occasions from cooking coal which was too
costly for everyday use. It is difficult to cook chana, and takes a lot
of time, and a lot of fuel. Hence, it was a rare treat. This was true for a lot
of other dishes as well.
Apart from luchi-cholar daal, on the
day of holi, Krishna was offered many other delicacies by devotees,
which of course in turn would be shared by human beings since idols have never
known to eat the food offered to them. Holi food had to be exclusively
vegetarian in Vaishnavite tradition. Some of the remarkable dishes were kichudi,
ghonto, potoler dolma. Malpua and payes was must in
the sweet dishes apart from local delicacies – such as sorpuriya at
Krishnanagar.
****
Another remarkable phenomenon preceding holi
was something called horir loot, which is a lost practice at present.
Old women of the village, often widows, after performing a puja will be
throwing sugar candies all around them, chanting some rhyming words. Small
children will gather to collect the candies and eat them. This would usually
take place in the courtyard – which would be kept clean – so I guess hygiene
was not a big concern although the kids picked up the candies from ground and
ate. According to my mother, this used to be a majorly fun activity and kids
used to look forward to this. The widows earned good karma from this activity
which was in their spiritual interest. It was so easy to make kids happy in
those days.
****
On the day when holi would be played
with clay and soil, a big pool of mud used to be created in someone’s courtyard
by pouring water into a lot of collected dust. Then a coconut will be thrown in
the middle of this pool of mud. Then the children, irrespective of age and sex,
would wrestle to win the coconut. This sounds like a version of Indian mud
rugby. The first person to get out of the wrestle with the coconut would win
the coconut and can keep it. My elder aunt used to compete and win in this
event every year – and share the coconut proudly with the four siblings. That’s
how the three days of holi would end for them.
****
I don’t know how I will celebrate holi this
year, or if at all I will celebrate it. However, writing down these holi
stories was definitely a good way to relive the past – the people, the places,
the times that I have left behind. Every festival, after all, is about the
people we loved and spent the time with. Festivals are our clever ways to
design our way back to our families and relate to our past. Relive your memories and reconnect to your family with a bit of colour, fun and masti at www.imlee.com
Ramanuj Mukherjee is a lawyer turned entrepreneur who is passionate about writing and culture. He has received President of India's award for creative writing. he works for online education startup iPleaders
Ramanuj Mukherjee is a lawyer turned entrepreneur who is passionate about writing and culture. He has received President of India's award for creative writing. he works for online education startup iPleaders
