unHoli

I had not checked the cyber café for a couple of days so decided to pull my several inboxes open and see if any mail had found it’s way in. It was the fifteenth of March, o six and the whole of India with the people in it had unanimously joined hands to celebrate a festival which the Encyclopedia Britannica call Holi. Bitter experiences of the past which told me not to venture out into mother-open on Holi-Day for the simple reason that one might end up getting painted all over with plastic-coated-semi-liquid- vermilion-bombs; let alone rashes and pimples and more rashes, which might follow an encounter with adulterated chemicals, meant for giving a golden-mauve to one’s cheeks. But I could not stop my adventurous self and stepped outside the door of the flat in which I stayed. I was ‘almost’ greeted by a bunch of school-going kids, all having a pouch with smaller pouches inside them, each with one different tint of powder ranging from yellow-ochre to Martian-indigo. Some of the hues were so extremely exotic that it would have needed a brand-new nomenclature altogether, say infra orange, or tectonic-violet. The multi-colored kids had come to wish a wonderful holi to the family next-door. They were pounding at my neighbor’s door and for a moment I thought that I just might end up being another victim of juvenile enthusiasm, flurry, excitement and a host of other adrenaline induced non-reasonable impulsive reactions so prevalent among the incorrigible pre-teenagers.
The door was opened and the children rushed in chanting the ubiquitous “ Holi hais, Happy holis, etceteras to the family members. To my relief the gang had found their prey and seemed to be engrossed in attacking them with whatever colored powdery stuff that they had been carrying .I slinked away without disturbing the noisy pandemonium inside. As I was rushing down to the floor below to catch the elevator, nearly kept myself from banging a forty something aged lady, facial features untraceable due to red and blue and long hair all across, who was scurrying up the staircase as if trying to escape the league of extraordinary gentlemen. “What the ****!” – those were the polite (!!) words of my nervous system after loosing and immediately regaining the balance of my feet . Thanks to the hugely unanticipated situation which hit me.
The floor of the six-in-all elevator had a generous layer of water, the neat sediments of pigment clearly seen through my contact lenses. The lift started to descend and the vibrations were strong enough to give the water sufficient motivation to force it’s way out of the enclosure. A small stream carved out across the dry areas of the floor, finally dripping into the dark space below. I opened the collapsible doors and heard the blunt burbling behind as my feet slopped their way out of the watery floor. At last, putting the door shut I set out of the building premises. It was approximately nine in the morning and a national holiday. So expecting any-body out on the streets at so early (?) in the day was in itself a distant possibility considering the fact that how much most working Indian-males love their seven to twelve sleep. The walkway was empty except for four plastic garden chairs placed along the circumference of an invisible circle.
I reached the gate and from behind the watchman’s cabin shoved in the sentry in salwar-kameez and beer-stink.”Holi Mubarak, sahib “is what he said and to endorse the same he rubbed his hands freshly dipped in a can of bottle-green paint on my cheeks and forehead and before I could even react to this circumstance, the damage was done. I wished him back. For a moment was stuck in a dilemma whether to go to the net café or to get back to the apartment for a clean up. I thought that if I would proceed to the café, the proprietor might just turn me down looking at my green face. But going there after a wash would involve taking a risk all over again and the sentry in his state of intoxicated abandon must have by now forgotten the list of people whose appearances he’d already modified enough for them to take active roles in twenty-first century Warner-Brothers’ horror movies. Retaking the path would mean running into him all over again and get greened up. I chose to go surfing. Pulling out the kerchief from the shallow recesses of a pocket I tried rubbing the paint off from my face. Stroke number three – the full of the handkerchief had changed its color from sky blue to the green of my face. It would have been a vain attempt to try rubbing things any more. Whatever could have been removed was removed and any extra millimeter of attempt to eliminate the remaining paint would have been thrown inessential.
The street was flanked on both sides by buildings with height of terraces varying from double-floors to pigeon-scrapers (roughly fourteen floors) and people in them ranging from Punjabis in turbans to the accented Tamils from Titucorin. I took the footpath. All the shops along the street were closed except for one. It was a small shop dealing with cigarettes, bidis, pan, chewing gums and such other paraphernalia and located beside a wall section of the edificeopposite to the building where I stayed. The shop can be seen from the window of my bedroom. Shopkeeper was significantly clean with patches of green on his face that was not quite strongly evident. Any dumb nincompoop would have guessed that it was the work-of –art, courtesy sentry- next building, which I had offered my face just a few nanoseconds back. However since he was not the person I was looking out for, I moved on along the path to get to the sify-iway outlet as fast as electrons moving through copper wires to light a bulb (otherwise off). Finally I reached my destination via unrecognizable, unidentifiable, creatures that I guessed were human beings. (The guess being based on the fact that the entire locality had many dogs too many humans, a few cows and even more bird-flu viruses. The dogs who always tried permutations of two hundred and fifty seven different methods of barks to try and scare me whenever I went for a nocturnal ice-cream bite from the Amul outlet next street, looked as though they have been just showered in the Kaveri waters in rainy seasons.. And the cows were looking equally clean though some of them had body odor and needed an overdose of Axe-deo soon. The viruses could be ruled out, as my eye gear didn’t include microscope .So humans it was. Logical See!)
To my knee-dropping disgust, the shutters of the Sify café was down, a promo of Hutch - the puppy, a crossbreed of German Shepherd and Indian-Doodhwala painted on it. Time: 9:15 ante meridian.

[ Fast forward a few more minutes .]

10 a.m.- My water tap was on full on. I was struggling with the paint which the sentry had poured on my face .I swear, It will never be the same Holi again. Amen.