I’ll confess I’d never actually heard of Holi before I arrived in India. The Hindu ‘festival of colours’ seems to be celebrated by people throwing coloured powder at each other, and filling water pistols full of neon-tinged water, before randomly attacking all and sundry. That’s my kind of festival!
So, earlier this year (March to be precise) I was working in Delhi, and Holi was at the end of my first week’s work. I thought that I’d rely on my trusty friend Couch Surfing (there’ll be a LOT more articles about that in future, I’m becoming quite evangelical about it) to hook me up. And hook me up it did, with a festival called Holi Cow, at a ‘secret’ (it wasn’t really that secret) ‘farmhouse’ (it was in a more rural area, but I didn’t see any signs of an attached farm) in ‘Chatterpur’ (no need for brackets for that one).
So I bought my ticket from a café coincidentally near work (handy!) and headed over there on Sunday. Mission 1. Finding it. Taxi drivers in Delhi seem to have a ‘best guess’ approach to navigation, and no matter what you ask them before you get in, they will always confirm that of course they know where they’re going, and then about ten minutes later confirm they’re actually lost and can you guide them. Certainly a phenomenon not unique to India that one. After we meandered aimlessly around rural Delhi for a while I cheated and got my phone out, activated the maps and GPS and guided us in. After a short and very chaotic queue I was given a wrist-band and a small, transparent, sealable plastic bag for my valuables and ushered into the grounds of the house. It took less than three seconds for somebody to smear my hair and face with what I am going to poetically describe as ‘purple stuff’.
Welcome to Holi! For the following hours I wandered around talking to strangers, drinking, eating, listening to the live music that was on and all the while becoming more and more like Joseph, only he needed a jacket for all his colours, whereas mine were all over me. In your face Technicolor Dreamcoat!
There was a really fascinating mix of people there, locals (loose term here, I met people from all over India), travellers, short-term workers like myself, embassy staff, ex-pats, all with a common goal of letting their hair down and just having a plain old celebration – getting colourfully messy in the process. And speaking of the colours, I didn’t find out til afterwards that they are generally very toxic – are often lead or asbestos based (wait, did I say asbestos? Yes, I DID say asbestos…) and have been known to cause everything from renal failure to dermatitis to blindness. Oh. Never mind.
By the time the police came to break it up in the early evening, everybody was totally covered in these pinks, greens, reds, oranges, purples and silvers – and there’s something symbolically nice about that I think. Despite the broad number of nationalities represented, the number of different skin colours on display, basically everybody looked the same. And I think that’s a great message, because at the end of the day, heritage and culture and tradition is a wonderful thing, but behind it all is the people. We might look different, talk different languages, believe in different Gods (or none), have different hobbies, networks, jobs, dreams and expectations, but at the end of the day? People is people. Always have been, always will be. And that’s my take-home message d’jour.
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