Had a nice Holi yesterday. We’d gone to a village called Paanghri. Two school teachers, who teach in the school here belong to Paanghri. This is the third time we decided to visit this village. People here are quite nice. Kids also like it since they have friends (4 kids study in the school here). Unlike many other villages, Paanghri has managed to retain a lot of good characteristics of an old Indian village. While in Dehradun, we’d learnt that Holi is a major festival in North India. The festivities go on for 5 days. In Paanghri, the burning of Holika happens on the same day as Holi (unlike in Mumbai, where it is burnt on the previous night) before 10 am. The whole village gathers cow dung cakes in a huge pile and then set it afire. The play with colours begins after the fire cools and the pooja has been done. Children don’t care for this ritual and begin playing since morning. Two groups – one of adult men and another of adult women go from house to house singing and dancing with a few musical instruments and playing colours with every family. They also collect festival tip from every household. If there has been a special event, the tip is higher. Over the years it so happens that the group of men who go around are drunk and the money thus collected is spent to drink more. We watched the entire drama, but did not participate in it. Later, along with the children, we played with colours for almost 2 hours. It was Fun.
Holi has also applied some brakes on the house construction. The mason was on an unannounced leave today and so were the labours.
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