Happy Holi!

Holi, the spring festival of colours though not traditionally observed in South India has now caught on with Namma Bengaluru witnessing both spontaneous celebrations in local colonies alongside various paid events organized around the Holi theme. As usual everyone on the retail side is jumping onto the bandwagon and cashing in on the Holi spirit! Hey….even some of the Kannada serials are running Holi specials! J Anyway, it was a quiet Holi this time (actually it was always quiet except for some random colour splashing by neighbours!) as the festival of colours this time happens to fall inconveniently during Abhay’s final assessment week! L Added to it…..Holi is not yet officially a Government holiday in Bangalore. So in between getting him to revise his division and his Kannada vattakshara and my regular Monday Court schedule, splashing colours is not exactly a priority! J

 

But thanks to Bubble ink, we get to vicariously experience the festival of colours through the medium of books! “Festival of India” was a book I had picked up for today’s prompt “Holi-colours”, but since Abhay had just finished his EVS assessment wherein he’d already read the story of Holika, and Radha Krishna, he vetoed this one L We are talking about colours, and so what better book on colours than the Quentin Blake classic titled “Patrick”!  This is a story of a young man named Patrick who set out of his house one day to but a violin and finds it in Mr.Onions’ junk shop and buys it with the only silver piece he had and Boy! he couldn’t be more pleased! He ran as fast as he could to the fields and blew out the dust and sat by a pond to play the violin when colourful fish in the pond began to jump out and fly, dancing in the air! Just then two kids named Kath and Mick amble over to the pond and enjoy the music and Kath is delighted to discover red ribbon appear around her hairdo and Mick finds his boots turned into blue ribbons! The three of them walked down the road together and come to an apple orchard and when Patrick played his violin which changed the green of the leaves to all kinds of colours. Instead of apples, the trees began to grow pears and bananas and cake and slices of hot buttered toast and the children were thrilled to savour all the goodies.  As Patrick and gang continued on their journey, they are joined by a flight of pigeons and a herd of cows who also begin to sprout beautiful colours, a la Patrick and his violin!  The colourful entourage met a tramp who looked unkempt and had whiskers and smoked a pipe puffing out smoke from it. As he enjoyed Patrick's tune, he was transformed into a man wearing colourful clothes and the sparks from his pipe got bigger and brighter until they were a shower of colourful foreworks. They all continued on the road lead by Patrick, the fish, pigeons, the cows, the whiskery tramp puffing out fireworks from his pipe paint town red and spread music and cheer to the people around! Isn't holi about spreading colour and cheer in everyone’s lives …..here’s wishing everyone a very happy holi!!!!!