This year I was most excited to share my favourite childhood festival with Baby S. Watching him excited to pick his water guns reminded me of all my exciting childhood memories of celebrating this amazing festival of colours with friends and families. The weeks of preparation – buying colours, ‘pichkaris’ and the water balloons! And finally spending hours trying to get those horrid blue and pink colours off before school the next morning. Some of my best memories! But once I moved to college, and started working, Holi became just a fond but distant childhood memory.
But this year when Baby S came home from preschool and excitedly spoke about how he had learnt about Holi and couldn’t wait to play with his friends, I almost mirrored his enthusiasm as we immediately left for the market for an exciting ‘Holi shopping spree’! But as I picked colours and learnt all about the herbal and non herbal variety and the numerous varieties of water guns, I soon realised that a lot had changed since my childhood. The first thing that worried me was all the discussions about the damage caused by the chemicals and toxins present in the regular Holi colours. And that buying the best and safest colours still did not guarantee that the same safe colours would be applied on Baby S as well. While I’m not a paranoid mum, but the thought of painful rashes on my baby was slowly but surely draining all my aforementioned excitement! Also somewhere it all felt a bit too commercialized. Ofcourse, even we as kids, always wanted to get the best and biggest ‘pichkaris’ to drench our opponents before they got a chance to attack us, but watching the kids in my building show-off their high tech ‘weapons’ with insane storage capacities and probably equivalent price tags, just didn’t feel right! I missed the simple and yet extremely fun Holis that I had enjoyed and longed to give Baby S a glimpse of the same.
The Holi Farm Day planned by Mogly’s came as a blessing! We spent an entire day feeding farm animals, splashing in the water slides – with no toxic colours or fancy guns, enjoying the enthralling tale of Prahlad and Holika and learning about the origin of the festival and finally having an absolute blast showering flower petals and herbal gulal on all our friends! What better way to celebrate the festival of colours than to drench ourselves in the breathtaking myriad of colours gifted by nature! No expensive guns and no fear of toxic chemicals, just the pure joy of watching Baby S discover and rejoice in the beauty of colours – the best Holi ever.
Maybe in the years to come, Baby S will also want those water guns and attend some crazy Holi parties, but till then I will try to introduce him to the festival in its pure non commercialized avatar, hoping that even when he buys those fancy guns, it will be the simple unpretentious Gulal that will still make him smile and say Holi Hai!
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