It’s time to welcome one of the biggest Hindu festivals with fuchsia hands, bottle green cheeks and yellow hued hair. Holi marks the arrival of phalgun or spring. The festival of colours is also a celebration of triumph of good over evil, of fertility, forgiveness and love.
It’s also one of the most exciting festivals when everyone is in the mood to indulge in merry-making playing with colours, tucking into some delicious gujiya, mathri and malpuas and sipping on thandai laced with some intoxicating bhang. As we get set to celebrate Holi today, we speak to a few Bengalureans on their crazy bhang moments.
Bhang is sometimes mixed with sweets or thandai and consumed on Holi. This also holds an age-old cultural significance — to free oneself of past mistakes and to end conflicts by meeting others with open arms.
Most Indians have one or two crazy instances of ‘forgive and forget’ after drinking the potent drink. Model coordinator Sonu Kumar quips, “I hosted a Holi party last year at a private farmhouse with 150 people and it was great fun. All of us gorged on Bengali sweets and Bhang thandai. It tasted different from the usual drink. We danced to Bollywood hit songs of the 80s and after playing with colours, drenched from head to toe, we were in our own world. I started dancing non-stop and my friends told me later that I was laughing like crazy. One of my other friends got emotional and started crying, remembering his girl friend in the UK. All of us laughed at his stories.”
The fun and frolic of Holi is contagious. Entrepreneur Vikram Ahuja, Byond Travel shares, “Once during Holi, I was in Pushkar and we discovered that most restaurants were serving something called ‘special lassi’ if you asked for it. It was lassi made with bhang. It comes in light, medium and strong flavours! So, we spent the day going from place to place in our quest to find the best special lassi. Needless to say, we didn't go too far and by the third restaurant, we were a laughing mess. We made complete fools of ourselves, but it’s one Holi that we will never forget.”
Recalling one Holi where he and his friends went berserk, DJ Anoop says with a naughty smile, “We were a group of college friends playing holi and drinking thandai laced with bhang. And as expected, we were buzzed! Some who lived around the block had driven and insisted that they’d drive back. All we did was laugh. Some went home, and what should have ideally taken them 10 minutes, took over an hour! We were worried, so we decided to trail them. We found them parked just a little ahead of the party venue. They said that they had been driving really fast and still had not reached, even though the car was stationary! All we could do was laugh our guts out.”
There are also teetotallers who relent on special occasions. Socialite Babita Sharma adds, “I don’t drink but on Holi at a private party, a friend mixed bhang in the pakodas and thandai and after eating and drinking, I was so full of energy that I danced non-stop like a live wire. I continued to dance all day and even did a Nagin dance! But for the next few days, I had a migraine attack. It was sheer madness."
As Holi moments go, Gaurav Langeh, ex-AOL technical consultant recalls, “While most of my friends went crazy and were dancing like mad men, the bhang ensured I slept for three days straight!”
