Holi -- be that as thy name -- go lightly on our clothes*

*Geddit -- my Christianity meets Audrey Hepburn headline puns? Ha, ok, go on.

So, I texted my old boss asking if his ex girlfriend's rumoured new boyfriend is gay. He replied: Maybe. Why? I said: Who cares. Just checking if you're back in town. Then he called. I was at a south Indian eatery with a friend.

Ha ha ha, he laughs. That's him alright. We had a 5 minute 27 second chat (the intrepid reporter in me checked call log) about how things are. Me to him: how was Mumbai Bombay? (Excellent! I'm going back), how was Goa? (Even better, went to Candolim again), how's the book doing? (Sold out at most places but restocked at very few, damn publishers), how're the women doing? (more gorgeous, in their plurality) and so on.

Him to me: Where are you? (Hauz Khas village), what are you doing? (drinking rasam), have you found a job (no, find me one), what are you doing? (I just told you), No, I mean for St Patrick's Day? (Since when do we do anything for St Patrick's day?!) and then woh sab chhodo -- forget all that -- what plans for Holi?

And that's where the spinning conversation top spins to a halt, or rather stays aspun in one place, er, spinning. Holi is like new years. Everyone must have a plan. Unless someone died in your family. In which case, indoors and mourning is the respected order of the day. My friend and former boss, freshly returned from Goan decadence, wants to go to a large yet exclusive gathering of rich people and hot chicks. The plan is being worked on.

I have mixed feelings about Holi. Nothing, no festival, nothing about Diwali even, beats the 9 a.m anticipation of a Holi morning. Digging out tattered full-sleeved cottons to wear, preparing ammo -- the water pistols, the packets of colour -- and rounding up the gang, doing a demonic jig to the beat of the dhol in the distance of the destructive morning it will be; all brings back memories of growing up surrounded by relatively simple, small town madness.



Tractor rides down tree-lined roads, trees that were painted rust and white to ward off termites in Army cantonments barb-wired from the rest of the world, bottles of sand piper beer and bhang ladoos, entire regiments and drums moving from one mess to another to wish equally drunken comrades, their wives and happy-to-squeal kids holi mubarak...

And then there were my Holi hangovers more recent.



Do I hate Holi? I definitely hate gujiya. But let's put it this way, before contact lenses, I loved holi. But then I couldn't see. Now that I'm a blind hag, I whine about people using too much permanent colour that gets into your eye and not enough of that herbal shit that can at least be washed off. I worry about looking like a troll and being attacked by them in hordes. Holi = best day to get touchy feeling, rubbing down the opposite sex with a bit of coloured grease lightening and pass it off as the spirit of things. There will be egg-throwers, balloon pelters, hormonal wolf packs singing comic versions of rang barse, dying for the girls to get soaked, splashed, stained and pink -- of course, I have mixed feelings!

Bata chappal is blue
Holi is pink
If you wear kurtis
Kurtis will surely shrink

If you're wearing white undies, it's even more pink. Fingernails are pink. Ears are pink. If you work in heathen offices, jungly co workers will rough house your white keyboards to make them pink. Stray dogs are yellow and pink. The bhang you drink in the lawns of affluent farmhouses amidst strangers with grinning rainbow faces who, as a way to initiate into party proceedings, toss terrified you in a frog-evacuated pond, with zero regard for your comfort level because presumable everyone is smashed and no one minds, is pink. The tint water balloons acquire is pink. The car seats on your way back home despite your plans of newspaper as protection, are pink. If you're foolish enough to not stash your phone away on Holi, your LED screen is now PINK. They may call it a festival of colours, but you never see green finger nails on the morning after. It's always... fill in the blanks... go on... starts with a P, ends with an ink.

So far, with three days to go, my plan is to sit in my ivory tower, with my clean hair, and my clean skin, and protect the honour of my white undies.**

**the writer is a fickle minded being, with an inexplicable love of jungly coworkers and heathen strangers and often friends, who have in the past dunked her, in her tattered cottons, into muddy waters that -- what do you know? -- were once pink. Seen as she has been splashing about doing this giggly wobbly chimp traipse, her word is anything but absolute. Her blog, only less so. Yet in her wishes to you, there is warmth, goodness, and at the thought of the first balloon strike, loudly she squeals to all the water-shy namby-pambies such as her 40 per cent alter self, happy, happy Holi!