Chapter 6

Tomorrow is Holi - the festival of colors and today was Choti Holi. Let me first explain the concept of holi . In Choti(small) holi, people in a community gather around a huge pile of wood and make fire and eat snacks. Main holi is played with colors wherein people go to everyone's house, exchange colors and eat sweets. There are many mythological reasons behind this rituals but they are not important here. The concept of Holi -both choti holi and the main one are not very much appreciated by Mr. Naman. And by not appreciated, Mr. Naman dislikes them very much. At the eve before main holi Mr. Naman takes a heavy dinner, buys juices, fruits and chips and locks himself in a room. The room obviously contains either a book or a tv.

Such was not the case when Mr. Naman was a child. As a child, Mr. Naman used to organize these festivals with great care and attention. He used to organize small holi assuming a leadership role. He with his friends used to gather wood, collect money from the neighborhood to buy sweets, and snacks, assemble wood to make the fire. But all this was nothing compared to Mr. Naman's excitement for the main holi.

For the main event, Mr. Naman's preparation used to start 2 weeks in advance. He was very careful in picking up pichkari. He used to pay detailed attention to the new models available in the market carefully examining the advancements in design and technologies. Believe me, to Mr. Naman, holi was nothing less than a war of colors, everyone should be colored - that was his goal and pichkari was his weapon. The weapon that holds maximum ammunition was chosen. Therefore, he always ended up purchasing the simple bottle to hold water one as it stored maximum amount of water. Water balloons were like the grenade bombs, very effective but he rarely gave attention to them because they were cumbersome to make. But on every sight of someone else's made ballo0ns, he was quick to grab them. Colors that are used to dissolve in water were always chosen to be as strong as possible for maximum and long lasting effects.

As the saying goes - Everything is fair in war, Mr. Naman rarely hesitated to color anyone even when he was not playing like his mother in kitchen or the morning milkman or any person walking in front of his home. As a result of above, once he was chased by an young man who lifted Mr. Naman and threw him in tank full of water. In another instance his mother did not gave him the gujiyas (holi sweets) because he had colored the kitchen walls. Mr. Naman claimed that it is not fair as these sweets are made once a year but no bit of rationalization was possible.
Mr. Naman then realized that the saying is incomplete. In his opinion, it should be modified to - Everything is fair in war but so are the repercussions.

Just like in war, soldiers wear a standard uniform made to suit their interests, Mr. Naman also made a design of a jacket fitted with pichkaris with carefully designed pockets for colors, remote controlled triggers and what not. He often used to imagine himself wearing that uniform and used to call himself Holiman (in spirit of superman, spiderman etc). Such was the dream world of Mr. Naman.

So why does Mr. Naman does not play Holi anymore? One thing that Mr. Naman didnt like on the holi day was the extensive bath that he had to take to get rid of the colors. To him, these were the injuries of war and bathing was like an operation to cover the wounds and indeed it was painful to him. Slowly and slowly, bathing became a more painful event than playing colors and thus he stopped playing holi. But he still understands the mentality of the children in his community who are waiting for any opportunity to color him. He has heard that there are even bets going on who will be the first one to color him and several soldiers have taken it on them as the mission of this year's holi. So to avoid them this luxury, he locks himself in a room and waits for the festival to get over.