Festival of colors, Holi!

Just like many hindu festivals, Holi has a mythological story of its own....

Holi is not only about colors and sweets. It reminds of the divine and eternal love of Krishna and Radha. It also reminds one of Narashima, Prahlada and Hiranyakashyapa and thus the fact that ‘Truth and Humanity are invincible forces in the Universe’.

This was the mythological significance of the festival of colors. Now comes its part in my life. 

I have been brought up fully in north india, hence, holi has been a part of my life since I was a toddler.

One day before the holi festival Appa would buy us colors, water baloons, and our water guns. I remember getting a water gun that had a small water tank, wearing that like a school bag would make us look like some farmer who sprays pesticides over his crops.Now comes 'THE DAY'.  On the day of holi, in the morning...not very early Amma would take out some of the oldest clothes for me and my younger brother.Apply some oil on our face so that it is not difficult to take the colors off once we are done with playing. Appa would fill a bucket with colored water and some balloons, thinking we would splash the water and the balloons on others, but on contradictory all that color would end up on us as we were the youngest in our society. After playing for a couple of hours we would look so colorful and so unrecognizable that even Amma would take a minute to realize that we are Shruti and Shravan...Then she would spend next one hour on trying to remove all the color. No matter how hard she tried, color had to stay for next three days... 

As we grew up our Holi gang expanded, we shifted from Delhi to bareilly. Here we played holi in the local park with not a bucket but a big drum of colored water, powdered colors that would go off easily transformed into pakka colors that wouldn't go for whole one week! Students going to school like 'AVATAR' characters was a common sight as holi colors refused go off even after holi vacations got over. We shifted to 'OUR' home finally in bareilly after 6 years of our stay in rented houses in the city. Our new home was an apartment, apparently the first apartment in the town hence was famous. A holi party was arranged by the residents. Best thing about it was that Amma who had never played holi in all these years of her stay in Shahjahanpur, Delhi and Bareilly played her first holi! Had our first well organized holi, sweets, thandai and the colors. Sad thing about it was that, it was our last holi in Bareilly. Appa got transferred to Lucknow. 

In lucknow holi became limited to having sweets, visiting friend's place, they visiting ours. Playing holi became limited only to Shravan who had his toli .... Well, not really! I did stop playing holi after we shifted from bareilly to lucknow due to lack of a proper group but it all changed this year! Our first Holi at our new apartment, all of us played like we used to, every year. We had an awesome holi party arranged at our apartment, colors, sweets and also a cricket match. Though i won't call it a perfect one as the most important part of the family, my little brother was in delhi...far away from us :(  :( and everyone missed him. Next time i am sure it will be an even better holi as he'll be there with us. A more colorful one.....even more fun filled.