Holi is a very famous Indian festival of colors to celebrate the arrival of Spring. The west knows it by the vibrant photographs of holi celebrations in places like Jaipur, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh and Indians know it by the euphoric joy of the people ending up in a dubious shade of brown after playing for hours with family and friends. Large celebrations of holi are rare to see in the south, particularly in Tamil Nadu and it is mostly celebrated here by families from the north and Gujarati-Marwari communities and all youngsters regardless of region and religion as its fun. People come together, throw color powder, flower petals and colored water on one another, run around, play, dance, drink Bhaang (an intoxicating drink) and eat sweets.
I do not celebrate Holi every year and when I do, we just put spots of color on the face at home and wish each other a happy holi. Sometime we wear white clothes with lots of colorful accessories and jewelry. But I do vividly remember three good holis from my school days. 
Teenage Holi
I have described before in numerous posts, the township I used to live in.We had government quarters with a garden for the ground floor houses and a terrace for the first floor houses. For the first grand holi about five of us girls gathered at friend’s house (terrace) and threw/poured color water on each other while running and screaming until we were literally blue black in the face due to the muddy colour. The next year we played at an officers club with a huge crowd ( Adults and kids together) and I spent the entire next week rinsing color powder out of my hair and getting scolded by parents of random children for throwing color on them.
Holi with Friends
But the most unforgettable Holi was when I was in my 11th standard. A couple of my girl pals decided to meet up at my place to hang out. The first friend and I got talking, thinking about the next year when we’ll be busy with our 12th boards we suddenly realized that the next day was holi. So both of us gathered dry leaves and flowers and went to the terrace to wait for our third friend. Poor thing, she came dressed in her elder sister’s yellow salwar- kurta which she was ” allowed to wear” after a lot of persuasion and we rained the dirty dry leaves and flowers screaming happy holi. She was furious with us as she was worried that her sis will take her task for soiling her dress. She kept screaming as we were apologizing and at one point it was so hilarious that we put more flowers on her.
Then it started, we threw water, color powder and all sorts of things on each, furiously laughing, screaming and running in the steps into my lane. Our hair was blue and yellow, our faces a curious mix of colours. I was wearing a nightgown and the third friend a mismatched skirt and blouse. We must have looked pretty spectacular running on the road. LOL.
Some of our classmates, guys who were resting after a game of cricket in the neighboring ground looked on stunned.
Then one guy quietly said “its holi da, that why this madness” almost afraid that we are going to kill them for saying it. But we didn’t bother, we ran up and down the street throwing colors with not a care in the world.
Later, after cleaning up and throwing more color on each other we settled down and discussed food, physics, our futures, our friendship and boys, not necessarily in that order.
Till date, every holi I reminisce that glorious evening, one that was filled with love, laughter and promise of a wonderful future. I hope and wish that our bond holds us together forever.
Holi these days has been synonymous with skin problems due to chemicals, water shortages or drunken groping. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You just need colors to gave fun during holi – it can be playing with textiles, colorful beads or even digital art but do indulge in something colourful that you love.
I wish you all a very happy, safe and colorful holi
I hope you found it interesting
Cheers
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