Holy Shmoley

Rabi and his four friends had spent the morning in Holi revelry.  Things had got a bit out of hand, as usual.  They had only limited success in washing out the silver and black enamel paint, grease, and red and green powder matted on their faces and hair, though they scrubbed till their skin simmered like Vesuvius in a fit.  They had tried kerosene to get rid of the paint and their scalps were stinging ferociously, like the butt ends of a hive of maddened wasps.

Rabi stared at Arun's face.  Arun had one silver and one green eyebrow, a black mask around his eyes, nose and mouth, and red and pink splotches over the rest of his face. 

"You look like a retard's nightmare,' sneered Rabi.

Arun grinned as he looked at Rabi's purple lips under a bright blue moustache.  "You should talk, Sleeping Beauty" he chortled.  "Have you had a look in a mirror?"

Rabi blinked at the acrid power wave of kerosene fumes emanating from Surya's head.  "You could have at least dabbed on some after shave or deo or something," he complained.

"I emptied a whole bottle of my sister's perfume," came back Surya.

Holi festival usually falls on the full moon day of March every year.  People rub colored powder all over each other on this day.  They splash each other with colored water - and often much more.  Some of the more boisterous types use paint, lubricating oil, and grease.  Kids ambush passersby with small water-filled balloons, often colored with dubious dyes.  Some of the meanies put marbles in the balloons.  Students in some college hostels dig deep pits, fill them with coloring agents, mud, clay, cow and bird crap, and any other guck available and treat victims to unexpected gunk baths.

In some parts of India, people cuss at all comers, known or unknown, without fear of retribution other than verbal.  Some of the language heard on this day can singe the hair off a polar bear.  Girls of the sensitive kind who value their aural chastity do not venture out on Holi day.

In the evening people have a bath, scrub themselves as clean as possible, wear fresh clothes, and go out into the neighborhood to hug neighbors and friends and exchange Holi greetings.  Later they gather around bonfires for jokes, songs, and recitals, most of which are explicitly vulgar.

Holi is also the day for bhang.  Bhang is made of cannabis leaves and flowers ground into a paste which is consumed neat, mixed up with sweets, or stirred into thandai, a thick concoction of almonds, spices, milk and sugar.  Bhang is like edible TNT, and is consumed in megatons on Holi.

Bhang is a very nasty surprise for the uninitiated.  One Holi a long time ago, during my college days, I had my only experience with bhang in the hostel room of a friend.  Soon after swallowing the stuff, I felt like I wanted to scratch the insides of my throat, my lungs, my intestines, and my rectum.  My eyeballs seemed to swell, threatening to pop out of their sockets.  Someone was driving a wrecking ball into my head.    I was sure my blood vessels were bursting and my heart was in overdrive. The room shimmied like a metronome in an earthquake.  I consumed water by the gallons, but it did not help.  Luckily I slept off at around seven in the evening.  I came to at about three the next afternoon and spent some time wishing for death before I finally moved out weakly, like I had severe palsy.

Rabi and his friends spent a couple of hours greeting neighbors and friends and then headed off to the Room.  The Room was a retreat for local youth who sneaked in there for smokes, joints, booze, and on occasions, bhang.  The Room had a desk and a chair in one corner, a bare cot of hemp woven on wooden frames in another corner and several rugs on the floor.  One single bare bulb on a wall, above a poster of Buddha, provided illumination of the candle power kind.

On this day the Room also had two large buckets of thandai and several steel glasses on the desk.  A few guys were lolling around, drinking thandai and chattering.  They all looked like they had walked through rainbows.  Cigarette and pot smoke curdled around and the smell of grass mingled unpleasantly with that of kerosene.  Rabi and his friends filled a glass each from the bucket, and spread themselves out on one of the rugs.

They talked about some girls they had teased in the morning, then about the latest Hindi movie.  As the thandai flowed, their conversation became jagged, with long pauses.

After one such pause, Arun said dreamily, "Hey guys, I got a dare for you."

The others stared blankly awhile before the words registered and Surya asked, "Yeah, what?" 

Arun pointed at the bulb above.  "I bet you can't climb the rays to the moon up there."

They stared at the bulb through the smoke for a while.  It looked like a bulbous moon behind wisps of cloud.  Then Rabi said, "It is a full moon, isn't it?"

"Yes," replied Arun, "and I bet you can't climb up there."

"I bet I can," challenged Surya and staggered onto his knees.  Then he paused, a thoughtful expression on his face.  He turned to Arun and grinned slyly.

"You think I am an ass?" he asked Arun.  "When I am part way up there, you will put off the switch, turn off the moon and I will be stranded."

They sipped at their thandai as they considered the problem. 

"No," said Rabi, "you won't be stranded if the moon is turned off.  You will fall all the way back to earth and break every bone in your body."

"That wouldn't be a bad thing," commented Bijay.  "If he dies on Holi, he'll attain moksha and get all the bhang that he needs in heaven."  Moksha is release from the weary cycle of rebirth, the ultimate for a soul.  Until you attain moksha, you are bound to keep getting reborn, but the bright side is: the probability is high that you will not be born a man again th next time.  You stand higher chances of being born a superior creature, like a duck-billed platypus.

"Not in my room, you won't, so go break your bones and die somewhere else," declared a voice from across the Room.  It belonged to Shashi, the owner of the Room.

For a long time, they maintained a silent contemplation.  Then Surya stood up, saying it was time to go to Tundikhel for the night's bonfire.  They all staggered out.

Tundikhel is a large common the size of more than eight soccer fields.  A huge crowd gathers around an enormous bonfire there on Holi, singing lewdly and dancing suggestively pretty much till the sun rises.

The Room's door opened out onto a small lawn, on which there was a puddle of water.  Surya stumbled out of the door and came to an abrupt stop.  The others bumped into him. 

"What's the matter?" asked Rabi.

"Look at that large pond of water," said Surya.  "We will get wet wading through it."

They eyed the puddle in consternation.  It looked like a pretty deep lake.

"I wonder if it's got piranha in it," pondered Bijay.  He had seen a documentary on South America on Discovery channel a couple of days before.

"Well," said Arun, "we got no choice, so let's get going."

They took off their shoes and rolled up their pants.  Surya took an exaggerated step over the puddle, as did Arun and Bijay.  Rabi tripped over his own feet and fell face down into the puddle.  The others raised a great fuss rescuing him and dragging him away.  Rabi was effusive in his gratitude.

"Thanks a lot, guys," he stammered.  "You certainly saved my life."  The others smirked.

"What are friends for?" asked Surya.

They resumed their journey.  Their route to Tundikhel took them through New Road Gate.  The gate is a large arch spanning New Road at the Tundikhel end.  There is actually no gate, though there might have been one earlier in history.  The bottom of the arch at its highest is about 30 feet off the road.

As they approached the gate, Bijay suddenly stopped in his tracks.  He pointed at the arch and exclaimed, "My God, look at that."

"Look at what?" asked Surya.

"That arch," said Bijay.  "It has become so small.  We'll have to get down on our hands and knees to get through it."

Rabi teetered on his feet, peering at the gate.  He said in a voice filled with awe, "That's true.  We'll have to crawl."

They all stared with jaws hanging at the gate.  There seemed to be a very small gap between the bottom of the arch and the road.  Bijay staggered over to the middle of the road, got down on his hands and knees and told his friends, "Well, come on, it's no use wasting time.  Follow me, guys."

They followed Bijay and got down on their knees in a ragged line behind him.  "Watch your heads under the arch, guys," he said.  "Don't raise your heads, or you will hurt yourselves."

He started off towards the gate in an unsteady crawl and the others followed.  As they progressed, passing vehicles had to brake sharply and swerve, and they were treated to a stream of profanity and several middle fingers, many colored brightly.

As they reached the arch, a policeman came sauntering around the corner.  He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw them, did a double take, and then stepped briskly to Bijay's side.

"What the hell are you guys up to?" he cried. He got no answer.  They kept crawling.

"Stop," he shouted "and get off the road now."  They did not answer him, and they kept moving.

The cop flew into a rage.  "For the last time, stand up and get off the road," he snarled.  By this time, Bijay and Rabi had crawled past him, and Surya was just getting past him, closely followed by Arun.  After a brief silence, the cop raised his nightstick and cracked Surya and Arun hard on their heads.

"Ow!" yelled Surya.  "Ouch!" yelped Arun.

Bijay stopped and turned around.  "I told you guys to watch your heads, didn't I?" he snapped, irritated.