To leave Bangalore and its gentle high-altitude love, and to
be in a mega city that screamed CAPITAL and many other obscenities at me, was to feel
reclusive in a way I never thought possible.
And then, to cut the long story short, I found Holi. On one sunny terrace
in 2009, with friends I did not yet love, with strangers that wielded grabby
hands, with the bright orange of genda phool and technicolour bhang, with an
insatiable hunger for dripping sweet gujias, I hurtled towards ribaldry.
With its uninhibited physicality, loudness, wooziness, showiness,
a festival that I once kept at a safe distance (hated), shook me up till I was sitting
with flowers around my neck and listening to the crescendo of Piyush Mishra’s Aarambh hai Prachand. The Beginning is
Fierce. It is Delhi that I always think Holi introduced me to, but really, it taught me the freedom of being indelicate.
