New Delhi
From the prime minister here to the trooper at the Pakistan border
and the villager in Orissa, India Saturday celebrated Holi, the
festival of colors.
Spring was in the air as people shouted "Holi hai", smeared colored
powder or worse on one another and danced to Bollywood's Holi songs
in neighborhood after neighborhood, city after city.
They shrieked as they were hit by water balloons or got a blast from
a water gun - the Chinese-made guns that have been the rage for the
past few years pack quite a punch.
Those still dissatisfied with the level of revelry upturned buckets
of colored water on friends and foes.
In New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and many other cities, hotels, clubs
and resorts organized special Holi meets.
People went from home to home greeting friends and relatives with
colored powder and gorging on sweets.
Youngsters used the occasion to zoom triple on their motorcycles or
packed into cars as the police looked the other way.
The rain in Hyderabad the evening before failed to dampen spirits.
In the older parts of the Andhra Pradesh capital, there were many
scenes of Muslims and Christians greeting their Hindu friends a day
after the Muslims observed Id-e-Milad, the Christians observed Good
Friday and the Parsis celebrated the start of their new year.
The Osmania University campus reverberated with Telangana folk songs
as students and staff joined in the fun.
The festival's syncretic tradition was kept up in Orissa's
Fakirtakia village in the coastal district of Jagatsinghpur, 110 km
from state capital Bhubaneswar.
Legend says Budhan Saheb, a 16th century Muslim prophet, started
celebrating Holi at a shrine called Satyapriya Peeth, located in
Birabarpatana village nearby.
Since then, Muslim families of the village have continued the
tradition. Hindus from five villages nearby bring their deities to
the Muslim shrine where all celebrate Holi together.
"We love to celebrate this festival together," Satyapriya Peeth head
Sayed Saukat Ali told IANS. "We have been celebrating it the same
way for the past 500 years."
Troopers of the Border Security Force (BSF) at the Attari-Wagah
border between India and Pakistan near Amritsar in Punjab danced the
bhangra and distributed sweets among their counterparts from the
Pakistan Rangers.
A delegation from a women's college in Lahore, who happened to cross
the border at the same time, also celebrated Holi with the BSF
troopers.
In Chandigarh - the joint capital of Punjab and Haryana - a heavy
police presence in most areas ensured that the festival remained
almost incident-free. Youngsters still roamed city streets on
motorcycles, cars and open jeeps. Policemen at the barricades let
them go after a warning.
In Chhattisgarh capital Raipur, though, over 218 Holi revelers were
detained from various localities for smearing colors on passers-by
by force and for misbehaving with women.
The celebrations started late in Himachal Pradesh capital Shimla as
the clouds kept people indoors. By the early afternoon though, big
crowds were seen downtown, where people sprayed each other with
colored, often drenching the passing tourists, who did not seem to
mind and sometimes joined in.
Across the country, politicians joined in the celebrations, some
solemnly, some cheerfully, some boisterously.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh received his ministerial colleagues at
home, Congress president Sonia Gandhi put on a pink sari to smear
colored powder on party workers, former prime minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee distributed colors and sweets to a group of children to
mark the festival and Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial
candidate L.K. Advani stayed home to greet relatives and party
workers.
Railway Minister Lalu Prasad lived up to the tradition his party has
set by playing kapdaphar (tear one another's clothes off) Holi in
Bihar capital Patna, with hundreds of party workers singing and
dancing around him and jumping into a huge water tank in front of
his house.
"Lalu Prasad becomes a common man when he plays Holi. It is his rare
quality," said Shyam Rajak, RJD national spokesperson.
The most popular water guns in Patna are those with Lalu Prasad
photographs, just as those in Ranchi have photographs of cricketer
Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
As the festivities wound down late afternoon, mothers across the
nation looked at their multicolored children in despair and gingerly
transferred the ruined clothes from the bathroom floor to the
dustbin.
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