Let Me Take You Far Away

This is the 14th installment of Lighthouse, my monthly column for BLink, a supplement of the Hindu Business Line.

Yesterday was Holi. Of all the festivals in India, this is the one that vexes me the most. What is the worst that can happen during Diwali? Some misbehaved children, odes to contraception each one, could be playing with firecrackers on the road. One of them could explode (firecracker, not child, or maybe both) under my feet as I absentmindedly saunter down the boulevard singing a merry tune, and my left leg could get blown off. Big deal. We must not be attached to material things, and a left leg is a material thing, so what is there?

Ganpati is not so bad either. It is true that festivals of that sort provide social sanction for hooliganism, but what is the worst that can happen to me? I could get caught in a terrible traffic jam, unable to do Vipassana meditation because of the monstrous noise, and I could get out of my car and shout at a man trying his best to separate himself from his limbs as a holy hymm by Sri Sri Honey Singh plays in the background, at a volume I can only describe as one decibel for each resident of Mumbai. This man could stop gyrating, notice that his limbs are still with him, and decide to shoot the messenger. He and his friend could put their Ganesha idol in my car, and drag me to the beach and immerse me instead. And there I go, back into the ocean from whence humankind emerged, and that really can’t be all that bad.

No, Diwali and Ganpati are quite alright. Holi, now, that’s another matter.

Some people don’t like Holi because it is ok on that day to violate other people’s personal space. The gangly teenage boy from Jhumritalayya whose life’s greatest ambition is to be a spotboy in a Sunny Leone film, and who has never gathered up the courage to speak to a girl—he practises speaking to his hand instead—leave alone actually touch them, gathers up the courage on Holi to go around molesting all the women in his colony, with a gang of other gangly boys, under the pretext of revelry. Or, if he considers himself to have too much class to stoop to this, he positions himself on the terrace of his building and chucks water balloons at passersby like my humble, previously dapper self. Indian Sniper. But this is all in a day’s work for me. I spent a few years commuting in Mumbai’s local trains, which change your perspectives of personal space forever. The freedom fighter who said ‘We are one country, we are one people’ was frightfully prescient, for he foresaw the development of the Mumbai local decades before it existed. In developed countries they keep their meat in freezers, but, ah well, every day is a festival on the Virar Fast.

No, what really bothers me about Holi is not the invasion of personal space, but the color. Not the application of color, mind you, for even when a gangly boy is applying it you can always close your eyes and pretend it’s a nubile nymphet teasing you a trifle roughly, and who can fault her passion, for you are terribly handsome. Closing your eyes also stops the color from getting in, and is a practice I urge you to master even on non-Holi days. I frequently close my eyes these days, and it’s most pleasurable.

No, it’s not color in its material manifestation that bothers me, but the concept of it—and the ideological battles that spring forth over that ultimate hot button. Like what happened yesterday. My friends invited me over to celebrate the festival, and despite my misgivings about the festival, I went, for they are pleasant company. Besides, no one invites me to anything or wants to spend time with me, possibly because they are intimidated by my intellect and good looks, so I thought, might as well be a bit social. I carried two pichhkaris with me, one filled with blue water and the other with black, because I thought that would give me an opportunity, after spraying my targets playfully, to joke that I had beaten them black and blue, haha. So I sprayed my host , and unleashed my wisecrack. Nobody laughed. Then the host said:

‘What black and blue? This is white and gold.’

At first I thought he was joking. ‘What white and gold? What do you mean?’

‘The colours you just sprayed on me. They’re white and gold. Why would anyone spray white water on Holi. You’re whitewashing a house or something?’

I refrained from commenting on his bulk and need to lose weight, astonished as I was by his comment. ‘What are you smoking?’ I asked. ‘Or have you overdosed on bhang? That’s not white and gold, it’s black and blue. Back me up, someone.’

My other friend Narendra, who considers himself fashionable and keeps saying ‘I’m so modish, I’m so modish’, and who was dressed in white pinstriped breeches with saffron paint all over them, spoke up on my behalf. ‘That is indeed black and blue,’ he said, ‘in keeping with our heritage. We have always been a black and blue country. We have had blue gods. And India invented the colour black.’

Rahul, my host’s cute four-year-old nephew who insists that everyone calls him ‘Rahul Jee’, now piped up. ‘That’s white and gold,’ he said. ‘If Narendra uncle is saying that’s blue and black it must be white and gold. But if he changes his mind later, so will I.’ He now resumed sucking his thumb, despite the country-sized blister on it.

My old classmate Arnab, meanwhile, was taking a cellphone video of the host. ‘The nation wants to know what the colour of this paint is,’ he intoned grandly. ‘Amit, what did you say it was?’

‘Well, I think it is…’

‘Shut up!’ He cut me off. ‘But you asked me…’ I protested. ‘I know exactly what I asked you Mr Varma,’ he said, ‘and let me tell you once and for all, it’s white and gold.’

At this point the cook, Arvind, entered the room with a tray full of mangoes. So we asked him what he thought the colours were. He sprayed some water from one of my pichkaris on Narendra. Then from the other. Then he threw a bucket full of red paint on him, and then a bucket full of yellow paint. And then he gave us the final word on the subject: ‘Sab mile hue hai.