Holi freedoms: Flirt with the neighbour’s wife

By Sharan Saikumar It was 30 years ago that the song, which would go on to become the national anthem of Holi, first hit our screens. A young married couple is celebrating Holi with friends. The air is thick with gulaal and verbal banter. Bhaang and music are flowing all around. But also flowing through all the bonhomie is a subliminally sexual undertone, an illicit courtship and generous splashes of sensuousness. The till-now secret shenanigans between Amitabh and Rekha are getting their first airing in public, onlooking spouses and disapproving society be damned. It’s Holi after all and everything goes. The license to misbehave is widely distributed and all bets are off. Many Holi songs went before this and many would come after but this remains the eternal favourite because it tells us so effortlessly that Holi is more than just a colour fest. It’s a morality-free zone. If Diwali is about unchecked consumption, then Holi is about unqualified permission. For one day the rules between sexes lie forgotten and all social sanctions are relaxed. On this one day no boundaries are respected, physicality is encouraged, alcohol is disguised as bhaang and women revel in flimsy whites. Metros like Delhi have taken the underlying permissiveness of Holi to another level. The Holi Cow festival is widely hailed as a desi cross between Woodstock & Glastonbury. It started in 2006 as a small get-together of underground artistes and has now grown to a full-blown music, theatre, video and progressive poetry fest with thousands of gyrating bodies in skimpy clothing tripping on alcohol in the name of Holi. In a world where crackers are being banned on Diwali and idols are banned for Ganesh Chaturthi, Holi thrives in spite of the fact that it manages to offend environmentalists, moralists and law enforcement in one single swoop. Increase in cases of rape and molestation are laid at its doorstep, along with harassment and obscenity and yet it gets away in a country where Valentine’s Day routinely gets thrashed. [caption id=“attachment_237701” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Why does a moralistic society like ours tolerate Holi? Reuters[/caption] Why does a moralistic society like ours tolerate Holi? The answer lies in divinity. Holi has always been associated with the playful courtship of Radha & Krishna to celebrate the incoming season of love, i.e spring. Krishna, the original seducer and legendary Casanova is the perfect poster boy for Holi. He’s playful without being childish, he’s sensuous without being adulterous. It’s in his name that we play Holi. Would we be allowed be misbehave without the Krishna connection? Would the moral police condone this permissiveness without divine sanction? I’d wager not. Interestingly enough, according to a recent piece in the Hindustan Times, the Krishna connection is a tenuous one. Krishna reportedly only smeared Radha with colour because he wanted her to look like him. That’s it. That’s hardly sensuous or erotic. But that’s enough for us. The Church needed a day to remember Christ so the winter solstice was made his birthday. We needed a day to let our hair down and to flirt with the neighbour’s wife, so we mixed in some ritual with religion and then proceed to get stoned in broad daylight. Holi is proof that our nation loves a good party but for some reason needs religion as an excuse for revelry. What to do? We are like that only. As a blogger, ex-marketer, evangelist of socialfootprint.in and would-be novelist, Sharan Saikumar wears many hats, none of which really fit.