Breakfree

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.