By Tara Narayan

DON’T KNOW about you but I’m quite sick and tired of festivals, feast days, carnivals, holidays, entertainment… galore! So it’s the season of Holi or urban hooliganism as it tends to be out on the streets because only the north Indian migrant workers and service folk who come to “Goa’s Dubai” celebrate it in nostalgic memory of their impoverished lands left behind in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Nepal or wherever, to work for a living amongst folk who don’t have to work for a living - at least not like them! Our urban celebrations no longer turn me on because they’re so fake and out of connect!

Why should we celebrate Holi when in our urban milieu we no longer relate to Mother Earth any more? Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t Holi an agricultural celebration when folk who treat their patch of Mother Earth as “mai-baap” (divine parents) smear each other with coloured powder or gulal to mark the passing of the cold winter months, thanking Mother Earth for vital air, earth and water? Air without which we may not live a minute, water without which we may not live for a week earth without which we may not grow life-giving food to sustain ourselves mind and body, heart and soul?

SERMONISING MOOD

I’M in my usual sermonising mood! As far as I can see urban, industrial animals have no right to celebrate Holi! Where are the villages and farmlands which once fed this ancient land??? They’re all dying for want of tender loving care, collapsing and making way for urban, industrial, cancerous sprawls….if we no longer have a direct, hands-on relationship with the good earth what on earth are we celebrating? What’s there to celebrate if you no longer have a relationship with Mother Earth and barely notice the seasons as they come and go?

You will say, what nonsense, we still eat the fruit of the good earth regardless of whether we live in the countryside or the city! Funny, we eat more out of tins, packages and pouches, because we’re stupid enough to think that what’s in packages defines food…our ways of drinking and eating are so far removed from reality and that’s no wonder we’re so sick in mind and body, heart and soul!

Urban Holi celebrations are a mockery of Mother Earth. Make the connections all the way and you’ll see how urban, industrial civilisation, is arduously engaged in exploiting, raping and killing Mother Earth on so many counts. So much so that when urban heathens celebrate Holi I feel like weeping. We’re insulting Mother Earth and sowing the seeds of our own death. Only the human of the species thinks that by eliminating every other life form on earth they will live in the lap of luxury in mega marbled palaces, relaxing and recreating before idiot box entertainment. If anybody drops by while we’re catching our favourite soap we barely acknowledge them! No, no???

TAKE PLEASURE

IF I want to celebrate Holi I’d go out and find a real honest to goodness countryside farm to see how it’s doing and how the farming community is holding up against the bulldozing of our mega urban and industrial takeover. Well, sorry for being a spoilsport! This said do take pleasure in the first colours of spring time breaking out here and there…the silk cottons are in stark red and hot pink bloom and the copper pods are already shedding their crinkly yellow blossoms with profuse abandonment. Why don’t we use this floral bounty to play Holi, if we must play Holi??? Floral instead of chemical powdered Holi, anyone?

But all this is to say spring’s in the air even in semi-urban Panaji and I wish I could keep it that way. If I were Chief Minister Digambar Kamat for a day I’d freeze all remnants of one-time paddy fields in urban Goa through a special ordinance …and let them stay that way cultivated or not; just as open spaces or gardens for urban citizens to breathe! That’s a pleasant dream! The nightmare in Panaji is that day in and day out I see its last few paddy fields giving way to high rise condominiums and life in this little four-street town will steadily deteriorate to more people, more traffic, more pollution, more urban squalor, more garbage, more stink… and our politicians will, of course, call it modernisation, development, progress… as long as they can continue to loot the public exchequer and feather their own nests of opulence!

Funny, these days I only get various festival wishes via SMS on my cell phone! Wishes a friend from Mumbai, “Rango ke tyohar mein, sabhi rango ki bharmar, kha key gujiya, pee key bhaang, lagake thoda sa rang, bajake dholak, pichkari ki dhar, gulal ki banchar, apno ka pyar, dher sari khushiyon se bharaho aapka sansar… yehi dua bhagwan se hai hamari har bar…Holi mubarak!”

I forgot! Holi is also about eating in the North Indian tradition…things like the kanji ke bare, papri and sweetmeat gujia…very Punjabi fare and both time consuming and difficult to make, especially the traditional kanji ke bare which are made in large lots before Holi and to last for the entire Holi season (the spicy savoury tart kanji ke bare are worth learning how to make for they’re delicious, they have to acquire their flavour out in the sun in a matka or terracot pot for eight days!). Jelebi, of course, is easier to find at a farsan outlet! Of course, up north it’s traditional to drink marijuana or bhang-laden rich milk drink called thandai while gadding about from home to home to play Holi. It’s yet another one of Hinduism’s festivals celebrating victory of good over evil (e.g. in this case the legend of Prahlad, Lord Vishnu’s little devotee who was consigned to burn on the lap of his aunt Holika, in a bonfire ordered by King Hiranyakashyap, the arrogant Asur father of Prahlad).

Holi is also associated with the youthful romping around romance of Lord Krishna with child hood friend Radha…one of our most enduring religious romances. All extramarital romances of yore were religious in nature!