COLOURS OF LIFE

The story goes that the baddie, Hiranyakashyap, was not happy that his son, Prahlad was mule-headed about preferring the Lord, aka Vishnu, over him, Daddy, as the ultimate power. Now, if you were a baddie who wasn’t truly evil, but had become so used to having your own way that you had gotten pretty puffed up about it, you would probably believe you were the next best thing to God, or better, as Hirankshyap did.

To cut a story that can become endless, short, the old man got so riled up that he did his best to batter his opinions into his son. Things came to such a pass that he tried to do the youngster in, by many different routes. And one of the ones that failed - they all did, or it wouldn’t have become a story - was where Auntie came in.

Auntie’s real name was Holika, and she had the endearing characteristic of being flame-retardant. This asbestos lady was the sister of Hiranyakashyap, and thereby Prahlad’s aunt. Whether she needed convincing is something no one knows for sure, but she agreed to the fact that her brother was the greatest, and that the word on that should be spread, so that her nephew also agreed. To convince the kid, who was well known to be obstinate, she grabbed him, sat down with him on her lap, and then warmed up the situation - the comfortable seat was a pyre, and the heat came from leaping flames.

Whether it was coincidence, a strange quirk of nature or that good-over-evil stuff, Holika emerged as a heap of ash, while Prahlad was cleaner, purer and more convinced of the power of his Lord than ever. Just or the record, soon after, the baddie was offed by an incarnation of Vishnu and all was well with the world.

And every Holi-eve night, an effigy of Holika is burned, a symbolic purge of the old, dirty and negative aspects of the year that was. The next morning, all, sundry and those not allergic to coloured powder and paint celebrate Holi with a great splashing about and revelry. It’s the one day kids can get as dirty as their little hearts desire, and Mom just smiles and adds a few more splashes of brilliance to the already vivid palette. It’s the one day that semi-tame pi-dogs slink away rather than grovel for scraps; the day when getting high on an opium derivative is de rigeur; and baths are mandatory, if not a compulsion.