In my childhood, I loved celebrating Holi, a festival of colour smearing - colourful Kumkuma (a red coloured organic powder) on each other’s faces or spraying coloured water onto others was the usual way of playing Holi. But, we had a crazy way of playing.

In such a frenzy, Shiraz who was a few years older living in the same street, threw me into a gutter nauseating with stench and murky water, as I got up it was dribbling all through the head to toe, I had to walk all the way home to have a bath.

It was only one of the wild ideas, but we had many others in store such as smearing tar, suner (silver dye), textile dyes, waste engine oil, grease from the vehicles, etc. Really it was a drudgery to get rid of such hazardous pigments or substances.

Come holi…. we would dress in our oldest or useless clothes so that we could least bother about them later. Our fun included stopping passersby on streets and demanding money lest we would throw them into gutters or smear all those horrible things. They would usually yield and with the booty, we would celebrate buying sweets and snacks. Such a practice is learnt from groups of women, a few days before the Holi go house to house, sing and dance, and ask for money.

We would play Holi till noon and go to a nearby tank (water body) or an open well where we could have a heartful swim. We had to have such a bath to scrape all the stuff off our bodies. The other reason was the scarcity of water at home. Whatever it was … there would still be traces of stains, especially of Gulal, a pinking colour which would remain as patches on face and ears for few more days.

Traditionally Holi was played with the natural colours, one of the explanations about celebrating the Holi festival is: It is mostly celebrated by the bachelors, sanyasis and people who practice brahmacharya that is the people who want to remain in celibacy. The Moduga flowers, that is the Butea monosperma species flowers. This tree blossoms happen during the Holi festival, the colour of the flowers is a combination of orange - reddish - saffron - vermilion. It is said these flowers when used on a person surpasses the sexual desire.

As a child I was ignorant of the Holi ritual, later I could learn more about its importance.

The day before Holi, a bonfire is lit by placing all types of biomass and with an puthla (A dummy) of an adult male person.

The biomass is collected by the youth over few nights and placed at the crossroads centrally located in the Basti. The biomass collected was such as cuttings of the plants, old tyres and tubes, logs, old furniture and sometimes without the knowledge of some people the biomass from their court yards is collected and placed in the heap. It is a way to dispose of all the waste material accumulated in a Basti.

A puthla of a adult male person is made using a pant, shirt stuffed with grass and old cloths, and the head is placed with a empty pot upside-upsidedown, everything is pierced with a bamboo stick - this puthla is called Kamudu - this puthla is the symbolic representation of the ‘sexual desire.’ This image has a prominent display of the private parts, created using some material. By lighting it as a bonfire people go in rounds saying indecent sexual slogans, make lots of noise by beating the tin cans with sticks, usually it happened late in the night. The whole process is called ‘Kama Dahanam’ - to kill or combust the sexual desire or lust in the flames and celebrate the play of colours the very next day. Remember the night Kamudu is burnt is a full moon night - people say the sexual desire is also high during full moon night.

A great festival to kill or suppress the sexual desires - Good.

(There are many variants of stories and methods of Holi celebration in parts of India, the above explanation is particular ritual to the place where I lived and understood).