Rang BhArSe........

I used to play with color a lot as a kid, around Holi time... now dont get me wrong, this isn't one o those fire n brimstone rants about how Holi is bad for your soul and will damn you to hell for screwing the environment over... no no, go ahead, play Holi, know yourself out... heres some money to buy the colour...

Just don't wake me up for it...

The thing is, Holi, like a LOT of other festivals, happens ridiculously early in the morning...

Which was fine as a kid really... that whole zest for life, enthusiastic play-with-the-colony-friends stage of life

and even now... if you're gonna play at a civillized hour...like post 11 am... count me in... but then again, by noon everything starts winding up... so on second thoughts...leave me a note... besides... its always a holiday everytime...what a waste of a holiday!

Though as a kid it used to be fun

Like the time i rang my own doorbell, splattered in color, and my mum opened the door and said, "kya hua? kaun chaahiye aapko?"

Or the time i was walking down the street after one particularly zestful Holi morning and i saw my old schoolteacher across the road... so i ran across to her to say hello, because she was one of my favorite... except for the fact that she ran away, thinking it was some random goonda coming to assault her

Aahhh Holi...

And there was this time my friend and i got really pumped up about holi and went out at the crack of dawn only to realise that we were the only two fools awake at that hour

so we spent one hour merrily using our pichkaari's on each other

Then we were wet and felt cold and went back home...

End of days play

and then we went downstairs in the evening

and on top of a cupboard in the porch we found a packet of color... Ever since then, we've thought that thats the single coolest cupboard EVER!

So we went down there the next day and figured hey! lets try our luck again why dont we!

And so we did

And we actually found another bloody packet

Except for the fact that this was a packet of white powder... but we were young and naive then, so we figured hey... white paint!cool... so we dragged out a bucket of water and tossed the "white paint" into it and stirred it around...

And three seconds later we had this big bucket of froth and soap suds on our hands... That taught us a lesson or two about getting excited about free color from the skies...

And people seem to play it in extremes don't they these days?

Its either really crappy oil color that NEVER comes off or eggs or some weird repugnant shit...

Or the sort of people that walk up to you, say "Happy Holi!" and smear exactly one dot of gulal onto your face and run away....

And then there's bhang... For those of you who don't know what Bhang is, loosely translated into English it means "Drink me and i'll fuck your head and insides up worse than Hannibal Lecter on the lookout for a midnight snack"

Aaahhh holi...