Like the cooing doves each year, the arrival of Holyars on our doorstep when I was a child signalled the imminent arrival of Holi in our town in the hills of Kumaon. They were ragtag gangs of urchins led by the town’s other young mischief-makers. Faces smeared with gulal, they moved from house to house singing Holi songs with full-throated ease: “Aaj Biraj mein Holi hai re rasiya (The land of Brij celebrates Holi today, O ye who love good times!)”
Biraj was Brij, the colourful land of Krishna, a land of milk and honey – the stuff of legends about all shades of man-woman love. Each year in the run-up to Holi, the Holyar’s thalis were filled with money, their mouths with sweets. And the town gave up its grim strait-laced codes of behaviour and turned into a land of love where gender and caste differences merged into each other till every one was a Holyar.
“Aji main Holi kaise kheloongi haan sanwariya ke sang? [My dear, how am I going to play Holi with my lover?]” sang our hirsute kitchen hand Daulat – turned Radha in a sari with his head covered – looking archly at his (otherwise) great enemy, our charas-loving milkman Mohan Singh, who would yell, “Kya ada hai jani, maar dalaa! [What charm my dear, you slayed me!]” as the urchins yelled “Holi hai!” and we cheered from the balcony, my mother trying hard, but failing, to frown.
A community song
Happily satiated, the Holyars departed yelling (marginally seditious) slogans like, “Jo jeeve so khele Faag, ho ho Holak re!” All that are alive, shall play a reckless Holi! The neighbourhood’s ever-vigilant housewives guarded their rotten old wooden furniture hoarded for fuel through that week, but the Holyars, aided by insiders, stole happily to add to the big bonfire they lit on the full moon on the eve of Holi. When someone later recognised a section of their missing wicket gate being consumed by the fire and let loose choice expletives at the Holyars, friends would shush them up with, “Yaar, Holi hai!” Leave it be, it’s Holi!
That was a long time ago in a Nainital where telephone numbers were in two digits (ours was 79), and we addressed the ancient operator as operator jue (ji). Wrist watches called hath ghadi sold for Rs 250 and salaries for lower level staff in government offices ranged from Rs 35 per month for a peon to Rs 85 per month for a bureaucrat. Trains had bogies of four kinds – First, Second, Inter and Third, and cinema tickets ranged between 35 paise and Rs 4.50 – for which you got balcony seats. But the whole town celebrated Holi as one solid community as if there was no tomorrow.
The Kumaonis have always been a fun and laughter loving folk with a keen musical ear and a strong predilection for alcohol, like people from across the entire sub-Himalayan region. Holi customs and songs along with liquor then flew into it from all over the northern plains, and people used a lovely medley of languages mixing Hindustani, Brij, Awadhi and Bhojpuri as they played Faag with abandon. The towns in Uttarakhand like Almora, Nainital or Ranikhet were cultural mixing bowls and had been so for at least three centuries. Even our Kumaon Motor Owners’ Union buses, which plied between towns, would have egalitarian messages painted on them and signed by a painter (Himmatuva) from Haldwani. “Phir Milenge, Jai Hind!” they said. Till we meet again, Jai Hind!
Long baithaks or gatherings followed the Holyars. All were welcome to Holi baithaks within clubs like the famous Hukka Club of Almora, or in homes where women held exclusive Holi baithaks for women. Food like gujiyas, spicy potato gutkas, cucumber raita and cardamom tea was aplenty. People helped themselves liberally eating out of bio-degradable leaf plates. The gatherings went on all night as men and women cavorted and sang and danced and acted out mischievous little performances underscoring some recent scandals.
When little India awakens
Although it was fast being overtaken by the bigger culture of the plains, till the 1970s, Uttarakhand culture could still, during Holi, even reflect on the government of the day. For instance, one song ran: “Aag lago sarkara dabbal mein pado tott" O government, may you burn for burning a hole in our currency. It judged it, it was ironic – “Chalo chalo re logo ab to Dilli mein durbar hai!" they sang. Let’s go, let’s go brother, the royal court has now shifted to Delhi!
It is during a community celebration like Holi, when the little Indias awaken – mildly to heavily inebriated, face hidden behind colour, and music keeping it company. The Kumaoni spirit of buffoonery sharpened by Holi unleashes the earthy wit of the little man – much as the happenings at Jawaharlal Nehru University did recently. The horror of serious (and reductive) ideology evaporates in minutes when authority is exposed to a multiplicity of humour and irreverence.
This is why when I heard one Bharatiya Janata Party leader recently call his leader “God’s gift to the nation”, I was reminded of a traditional Kumaoni Holi song I had heard women sing: “Tum sukh soye apne mahal mein, hum kaise Holi khelein lala/ Raja Bali ne yagya kiyo hai Indra ko asan kampo lala (You sleep comfortably within your palace O King, how can we play Holi? But remember King Bali (the Asura banished to the nether world) is doing a yagya and Indra’s (the Lord of Gods) throne is beginning to tremble…”