The Unnumbered Smears

Good day.
It was holi yesterday. The one time of the year everyone in the family celebrates, and generally does what they like. The main purpose of today’s entry therefore, is to describe how my family celebrates holi. I know you don’t give a shit. But you forget that I don’t give a shit about you, so I’ll write anyway.
The whole atmosphere begins to take hold when one of two things happens. The first is the arrival of Khoya from Lucknow i.e. my grandmother’s place. The other is my nanaji’s phone call informing my mum that the bhaang has arrived (from his village), and she should too. This happens on the day before ‘badi’ holi. About this time my mum leaves for New Rohtak Road (nanaji’s place). I could not go, and that is a tragedy. All my three mamas live there, along with ten of my cousins. The holi there is WILD. None of the servants (driver included) go hoe for the night. All night they, along with my uncles, sit and grind the Bhaang. Around one, my nanaji inspects the bhaang and if he likes it, it gets put in the thandai, which cools overnight in three drums. The ground floor is used only for preparation of the Tesu colour. Three drums in all. This gets poured into a bathtub older than the Great Wall. The night is spent singing PHAAGs (holi songs) on the roof (you know, rang barse and all).
The day arrives, and we (those of my family that are still home) get up early, and the first to get up smears the family with gulal. This person is normally either my dad or my grandmother. Having done this we prepare a store of water balloons, stick them in bucket(s), and wait. When the formalities of meeting the neighbors are done with, we stick the bucket(s) in the car, fill up everything that can hold water with colour, and head to nanaji’s place. When we turn into the street, dad parks the car and we pull out the bucket(s) and start loosing balloons like we were the First friggin’ Punjab Artillery. This does not help ery much, since they always have somebody on the roof who spots us. He/She sounds the alarm , and a sortie issues forth from the three-storied house, each man/woman armed with a half bucket of water. Chucking balloons at people loosing seven or eight liters of water at you every ten seconds at you is not a very effective way to conduct and assault. In any case we enter the house, and are treated to some brilliant mithai. The adults get to have Thandai.
By about this time, two or three other relatives arrive, and a toli, fifteen or so strong, is organized. The weapons of choice: pichkaris, balloons, eggs, grease, and generally anything that can leave a mark on human skin. We then go forth to battle, against the evil kids of block 45. If we spot their toli before they spot ours, we hide behind a building, pichkaris in front, ballooners behind (to put it like that orc chieftain in LoTR III), covering the bucket. They come in range, and the ballooners open fire. If they flee, the pichkaris give chase. If they keep coming, the pichkaris fire anyway. If they still come, the get the bucket treatment. No one runs through ten liters of water. Period. If ambushed, we just try to wet anything moving on two legs. This time we ambushed.
This lasts till about one in the afternoon, and then we call it quits. We get home threeish, and that as they say, is that. Da Geek has this nice entry about this year’s teachers; go read it, if you haven’t already. Plan to write a track back to it if I have the time.

Cheerio then.
AZGEZ BLOODFIST WAS HERE!!!

P.S. - I forgot about the paans which are also available in plenty. Had one of them myself yasterday. Brilliant things, paans.