One Thing to do This Holi!

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The festival of Holi is going to be here soon – once again. Like every year, everyone including newspapers, magazines, social media, temples and will be full of stories of Holi and the cultural tradition. There will be repeated emphasis on how Holi is symbolic and how it means new beginnings and triumph of good over evil and how the colors represent acceptance of all.

It seems, in the middle of this grill every year, the simple history of Holi is forgotten. That of Krishna and Radha and the Gops and the Gopis having a simple fun game. Everything connected to Krishna is symbolic, we all know. And we know his games with Gops and Gopis reflected the play of God and human beings. It has reflected that for more than 5,000 years. To tell us that one never knows the greatness of the person one is playing with – in life, friendship, business, anything.

This play is captured beautifully by Rabindranath Tagore in his 97^th poem of the Gitanjali.

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When my play was with thee I never questioned who thou wert. I knew nor 
shyness nor fear, my life was boisterous.

          In the early morning thou wouldst call me from my sleep like my own 
comrade and lead me running from glade to glade.

          On those days I never cared to know the meaning of songs thou sangest to 
me. Only my voice took up the tunes, and my heart danced in their cadence.

          Now, when the playtime is over, what is this sudden sight that is come 
upon me? The world with eyes bent upon thy feet stands in awe with all its 
silent stars.

Perhaps that is how Krishna’s play is! Making friends of human beings and having fun with them, through the day, through life, till the end of the play here on earth when one suddenly realizes his presence as God among men, till one realizes that one better put one’s act together before the play is over and it is time to go. No matter at what stage of life one is, no matter at what point, when the play is over!

So what do all these festivals do for one? They do bring a lot of preaching, for sure. But that preaching may not really touch one’s hearts or one’s brains. One may be excited for a day and then everything can go back to the way it was. Why does one let that happen? Aren’t festivals kind of wake up calls? To really bring at least one of the much hammered messages into our lives?

And so, if Diwali is supposed to bring us into the light of knowledge from ignorance, Holi is also supposed to shake us up about camaraderie. Traditionally, before people forgot, Holi was also the time to end feuds of all kinds. Feuds with family members, neighbors, friends, work colleagues, and others.

That sounds like a message one can surely adopt permanently in one’s life. Ending feud can be external and internal. One’s feud has to end both outwardly and in one’s mind. If one really wants to adopt this mental wellness message of Holi, one has to not just end a feud or bad feeling or anger or envy superficially and have socially cordial relations. It has to end in one’s heart.

The color and other paraphernalia of Holi are like the superficial cordiality. The feeling that will last will become the internal ending of all things bad.

So perhaps it does not matter if one doesn’t go to the temple. It doesn’t matter if one doesn’t participate in going around the Holi fire offering it sweets and millet pops. It doesn’t matter if one doesn’t get together with community and play colors.

After all, the play will end. That is when the real participation in Life will begin. That is when one has to root out, one by one, and slowly if not quickly, any negative feeling or hate out of one’s heart and mind. It is not generally an easy process. One needs to be at it continuously and still one may not succeed. One may even give up. Which is why Holi comes every year to remind one that the process of weeding has to continue.

And just like one has to shower and clean up one’s entire body of the colors, one has to clean every tiny speck of that bad feeling.

And then look and see how beautiful Krishna made the world!

Related posts:

Celebrating colors, camaraderie and community Holi: Ancient Tradition For Modern Times Holi Hai! A look at Holi in Hindi cinema Holi: Memories of Homeland– Remembering the gone days of colorful joy!