Holi- the festival of colors

My HOLI day began when I heard a loud knock on the door. I slowly yanked my head up from under the pillow (yeah sometimes ppl do sleep under pillows as well :-)). I looked across to see that my roommate nagendra hadn’t yet got up, then I looked at the time on my mobile and it said just 10:30 AM. Then I slowly dragged myself upto the door cursing the mofo’s who dared to disturb my sleep on a off day and asked “Kaun hai be?? Subah subah soone bhi nahi dete *****mi!” In reply came a Harbhajan singh style “Teri maa ki….” Which poor Symonds mistook as MONKEY. When I opened the door I saw two of my senior colleagues waiting with their faces hardly recognizable with all the colour splashed over them. As soon as I opened the door, one guy poured some colour onto my shirt and the other put some color on my face and with shouts of “Holi hai……………” entered the room. Hearing all this commotion my roommate jumped from his bed and before he could do something, with another shout of “Holi hai……………” the seniors, now joined by 5-6 other pals of my own batch pulled him off the bed and carried him all the way to lawn of the hostel and then put him on the ground and started pouring colours from all sides. It seems they had this ritual planned for all, except the heavy duty guys like me and a few others who needed more than 4-5 people to lift. They couldn’t afford to get permission for a hoist crane or a hydra machine to lift us. So instead they made sure that we were most colourful in the group(by now I know that most would have scrolled down to see the pictures and would be laughing at the way we got up from sleep :)

With this start I also joined the party and soon we were knocking at all the rooms that were closed and pulling guys out and colouring them or in worst cases pouring colour through the balcony windows and ventilators for the DARING one’s who refused to open the door. By 11 AM I was very hungry, we thought about going to the mess and having food. Since I’m now a member of the south Indian mess i’ve to go all the way around to the mess through the factory township. While going through the road, I saw small kids running after each other with colour guns as if they were all Anakin Skywalkers’ and Darth Vader’s fighting each other, only difference being that instead of the laser sabre they had the colour water emitting pistol :)(What a cool name). I remembered my childhood when I was in such a township back in the days when dad was in airforce. Being a mallu the guys here had thought that Holi would be something alien to me. But then they were in for a surprise.

I didn’t mind when they poured the colours and unlike the other mallu(siby) in our group I didn’t pick a fight with the guys who coloured me. Siby was hiding in his room after he saw the colours being sprayed on each other by the seniors and our batch mates. He wasn’t opening the door to anyone and finally I had to call him some nice words in our mother tongue to make him open the door. When he opened he was in for a treat like the others who didn’t open the doors easily.

By late afternoon the next KALAPARIPAADI or item of the day began-boozing off and singing songs. It seems that no matter what be the occasion, we Indian’s never miss a chance to have a good booze and shake a leg and dance or sing some songs. Here also it happened the same way, with a huge booze party being out up in one of the rooms. We had a huge collection of beer bottles, whiskeys, rums and even a scotch to top off the holi mood. Since I’m a light drinker : ) who likes to be in control even after a drink, I never go for the hard one’s and don’t do more than 2 beers. It’s because mostly I’m the one who goes and buys refills when we empty the stock, so the guys also agree with my philosophy that I should be able to drive without much trouble and be able to speak to the security persons at the gate without slurring :) And so it began, the booze fest and singing competition, songs in telugu, tamil, hindi, bhojpuri, oriya, english all began to ooze from the lips of the guys. Even I added a nice mallu song :), now you’ll know what kinda singing it will be, where even my song had audience :). After this when we got bored of hearing each other we had music blaring from the DVD players of one of the guys and also from my iPod.




Some of the other stars of the show



Both the mallu's in the batch-Enthoru sneham...........

So by 2-3 PM all were very hungry and headed for the mess. Some who were in a semi fluid condition ( AKA Paamp) had to order food to the room :). After the fooding, we decided its time for a bath to get rid of all the colours from the body and what better way to wash off than to go to the beach and have a bath :). We headed for the beach in two cars borrowed for the day from one of the senior officers and had a great time there too. At the end of the day, I lost my room keys, one other guy lost his pair of glasses.

This is how i looked at the end of the day

In the evening we had the official holi celebrations in the township with all the senior staff coming and had a blast of a time there as well.

All together this was the best HOLIday I ever had after coming to paradeep.