The previous night, I had a sudden urge to step out of the hall and what set out to be just a quick visit to an ice-cream parlour had me returning back to my room the next morning at 8. Denied of sleep I fell into bed, waking up 8 hours later pondering over whether I should have breakfast, lunch or dinner. As I was slowly beginning to face the day, albeit quite late, there was a knock on my door. Unsuspectingly I opened the door to bring myself face to face with three menacing looking people with war paint smeared all across their faces having wicked grins. Not only did I jump out of my skin, I jumped back to the farthest corner of my room witha yell almost ready to go down on my knees to beg God's forgiveness for ever having doubted in him. But then my ears picked up two words that brought a sense of relief, 'Happy holiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!!!!!!!!!!'. These weren't minions from hell, these were good friends of mine armed with nothing but colours and cheer.
So Tanvi, Ashmi and Aparna had started the holi procession from Holborn and then to Northumberland which was quite tame until they reached Rosebery. At Rosebery they set off an uncontrollable chain reaction of holi frenzy which prety soon saw the hall come alive on a winter evening. Folks oblivious to the armed colour warriors standing outside their doors, opened them to be swathed in colours of red, green, yellow. orange............Once baptised, they joined the crowd to assault and enrol more warriors. Soon the walls of Rosebery couldn't contain the burgeoning numbers of holi revellers, and the spillout on to the streets happened and the holi war was taken to Holborn and Grosvenor. Onlookers, passers-by and passengers on the buses looked on with shock, awe and amusement. This cold London evening, with the grey houses and the lifeless trees, we were a riot of colours on the street, painting the city where we went not with colours alone but with songs and laughter and cheer. And it was just not the janata celebrating alone, we pulled in our friends from Germany, Britain, France, America.....some happy to have just a tilak on their foreheads and others zealous enough to be washed by the colours. This was the best Holi I've played in a long long time.
To everyone back in India, and all our friends around the world, Happy Holi!
