Holi Celebration

All the festivals in India are colorful but Holi is really special among them as it is not only a colorful festival, it’s a festival of colors. It has its own Mythological values on India’s rich culture but to be very honest it always surprises me with its spirit. In a Holi day, entire day you will hear “Holi hai bhai holi hai, burra na mano holi hai” and literally speaking no one does mind when you put “Gulal” on them, whether you know or don’t know the person. This really happens. This year I spent my Holi with a group of people whom I hardly knew before, but now when I look back, I must say 11th of March, 2009 I spent my one of the best Holi ever. This is the spirit of Holi. This is the day when people come together; make new friends and old friends refuel their friendship.

The day started very early for me rather for all of us. We planned to go Ananda Valley which is on Nasik Highway. The trip was organized by my elder sister and her office colleagues; I just joined them with two of my close friends. Almost the entire group was unknown to me but we came to know each other very soon. We started our holi in the bus itself. Everybody put Gulal on others and within minutes the bus turned into a color palette. The atmosphere in the bus was magical full of different fragrances of Gulal.

We took our breakfast in the bus and reached Ananda Valley with lot many expectations. On first look I was disappointed with the entire resort as I expected lot more greenery there. But the fact is all these resorts are best place to visit in monsoon time. So now in the spring time we cannot get any such scenic beauty.

In the resort they have lot many team building games. Those games were really good but I was eyeing on the start of playing Holi with water colors. In the games, we enjoyed a lot, we played cricket also. Unfortunately my team lost the match to the other team. After the cricket match I could not resist myself and put some colors on Sourav’s face. Then all of a sudden we all started playing with water and colors. This fun didn’t last long as group leader Abhishekh suggested to have the lunch first, so we stopped rather postponed our plan till lunch.

Lunch served there was really good, though personally I feel there is nothing good in eating veg food, but actually I enjoyed the real north Indian dishes there.

After lunch we went to the rain dance area and started playing with all sorts of colors and water. They switched on the showers and some music also. I thought rain dance would be a great fun, but the fact is the way they planned the whole thing was not at all encouraging. It was really boring. Still we make full use out of it.

After the rain dance we got ourselves freshen and yes we all were really tired. But when the event manager came and ask for trekking then we jumped up again and went for a new sort of adventure. The trekking part was also really good, going on to the hill top and taste the essence of nature in this manner was a fabulous experience. After watching the sunset from hilltop we came down and started our journey back to Pune.

While returning back Abhishekh was asking about the rating of the trip. I gave it 3 out of 5. Actually I wanted to rate it higher but the problem was “Thoda rang bach gaya tha” and you know in a Holi day “rang bachna!!!!!”

Just a good thought

Let me share my one experience which touched me a lot. It happened long back. As I remember it was Durga Puja time of the year 2003 or 2004 and I was in Kolkata. We all went out together to see the pandals. In the afternoon we were in front of “Bose Pukur Shitala Mandir” puja committee. There was a long queue in front of the gate. Me and my cousin brother decided to stay away from this rush and did not feel any interest to get inside the pandal. We were just standing outside and waiting for the others to come out, suddenly I saw a Tata Sumo came and 8-10 kids came out of the car along with the driver. All of them were in between 8-12 years. They were not wearing gorgeous cloths as we all do during festival time. Their attire was very simple. It was pretty clear that they belong to some poor family and this realization surprised me the most. I was not able to understand how they could manage to hire a Tata Sumo to go for visiting pandals? I must say they were well disciplined, holding one others hands. Me and my brother, we were discussing, rather guessing what exactly is going on. I saw the driver is very careful about the kids, their gesture. He was scolding whenever anyone was going out of the queue but there was something special in that also which didn’t make the kids felt bad about it. When they came out of the pandals they were having sugar cane juice from a road side stall. I followed their expression and believe me I cannot explain that here. They were so happy in having the sugar cane juice. By the mean time I decided to have a talk with the driver about this. I was speechless after talking him. I am just sharing exactly what he said when I asked "Hey what’s going on, you are with so many kids!!! Are you from any NGO or anything like that?"

"No. This is my car and I work for a travel company. Actually I stay alone here and I don’t have any family with whom I can spend my festival days. So I decided to make my own family. All these children are from Jorabagan Slum area. Every year I take them to see Durga Puja. Yes I know I cannot afford much to buy good, branded new cloths for all of them. But I always try to buy some NEW cloths at least for them. You know that really make them feel good. I have my own economical limitations which do not allow me to go beyond this, but the fact is they don’t even expect more than this and they are happy so am I. For me Durga Puja does not mean praying in front of Idol, wearing gorgeous cloths, spending the whole night in a coffee shop. It is an event to make the people happy around you. It’s not only durga puja it’s true about any festival in India."

His thoughts really overwhelmed me and on that moment also I did not realize one more surprise was yet to come. When I asked that person his name he answered "Md Aslam". Hats off to my country and it’s culture.