BHOPAL: Fear tinged with anguish has somewhat jaded the colours of Holi that needs one-to-one contact for revelry. As the stealthy virus has again begun to blaze through the world as happened before the festival last year, revellers have been told to stay indoors. The fright of infection has limited their boundaries.
Applying colours on one another is the best part of Holi, says Alankrita Jaiswal. But, this year, there is no scope of playing it with colours, with such liberty as people are used to, she adds. Alankrita, a second-year student at the Bhopal School of Social Sciences, loves to recite poetry. Instead of playing Holi with colours, she plans to enjoy the festival reciting verses. She has an Instagram page, she says, where she will go live with other poets. She says she got the inspiration of poetry sessions from her childhood memories. She remembers the sidelined television that used to run on the day of Holi at her house. Poets used to hold mushairas on the news channels.
Another Instagrammer, Aviral Dahiya, who goes by the name of @unholicrisis, plans to organise an antakshari competition on his page to celebrate the colours of Holi. Dahiya’s idea of Holi is not just singing songs one after another. He says the game involves sipping thandai if one fails to come up with a new song within five seconds. The participants need to be spontaneous, he says.
Realistic ‘Appy Holi’ app
The pandemic has collared Holi revellers this year, too. But GenX has picked up the gauntlet thrown down by the virus. They have come up with a scheme to splash colour on their pals virtually.
Chahat Gupta, an aspiring musician, told Free Press that she and her friends used to make the rounds of the city with buckets of colours in their hands each year. The pandemic has put a stop to their mischievous adventure, she says. However, nothing can stop her from painting the bright faces of her buddies with even brighter colours.
Chahat has found a mobile application, called ‘Appy Holi’, on play store that will help her paint the faces of all her friends with colours. She has pictures of all her friends on her mobile phone, she says. The app makes the pictures look so realistic that even her friends will be forced to wonder when she trespassed to put on the colours, believes Chahat.
Festooning city with colours
An 11-year-old artist, Shubhangi Jain, has some special plans for Holi this year. She says throughout the year, the pandemic has kept people indoors. She plans to rummage through all the lockdown pictures of the deserted lanes of Bhopal and paint them bright. She says painting is her hobby and the pandemic has given her time to work on it. She wants to festoon her city with so much of colour that it never fades.
