The Holiday: Part 2

Before you read this, read The Holiday: Part 1

Photo credit: Keith Williamson via Foter.com / CC BY

The carpentry job—the one I talked about before I rambled into my dislike for Holi—began some days before Holi. Father supervised it all. He inspected the wood, the nails, the instruments, and—more or less—reduced the carpenter to a man who merely had to take instructions from him. The times my father wasn’t around, grandfather would step in to supervise.

Grandfather hardly interfered with the carpenter. He merely kept an eye on what he was doing and let him have his way. His observations he would tell Father over dinner. Father would then incorporate those into his instructions the next time he played supervisor.

Well, work progressed amidst the din of the traffic that flew up to irritate us together with the clanking and thud of the hammer and the whirr of the wood drill. It was irritating for the first few days. Thereafter, it sank into a vacant spot in our daily routines and bothered us no more. It became one of those sounds Bombay had begun to accumulate and stitch into its canopy of decibels. There was no point complaining about it: We had not the means to move to a place just as convenient and much quieter. We just smiled, sighed, and distracted our attention towards the meals for the day and pretty much anything that accepted and silently pacified our overworked ears.

And then came Holi. And with it came a population explosion in the house.

Father had a holiday. So, he was at home. Schools were closed. So, Sister Dearest and I were at home too. And since it was a holiday, the carpenter was in the balcony chipping away wood and hammering in nails and wire meshes on the wooden framework. Grandfather was at home too and so was Mother Dearest. So, all of a sudden, five people were trying to spend a holiday without getting into each other’s way. And the sixth—the carpenter—was trying to get his work done as soon as he could and run home.

Photo credit: Vasdokas via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

It was a day that crowned itself with a phenomenal wave of heat. We sweated, drank water, sweated it all out, and then drank some more. Outside, the frenzy of the festival had run amok. Most of the boys and men in the chawl we lived in were out on the road. Colours of all sorts soaked them into patterns of yellow, blue, red, florescent pink and green. And a shiny silvery white paste had anointed their faces beyond recognition. It was as if that colour scheme was an initiation into all things they considered masculine, macho, and manly. The initiation ritual also involved the usual cannabis and raucous behaviour as well.

So, they made it a point to hurl balloons all over the street—after they were drunk with the intoxication of the cannabis of course. Several of those balloons were aimed at girls and women who had to cross that particular road and make their way to a hospital close by. That hospital was open every day of the week and those girls and women were not the ones who had a rich inheritance to fall back on. So, they just had to make it to work come balloons and what not.

Photo credit: Jangra Works via Foter.com / CC BY

Nearly all the balloons found their targets. And the moment they did, peals of laughter would erupt from the gang from which they were shot. The targets would merely look up and down the chawl, quicken their steps, and sprint away. The men/boys/hooligans —whatever you want to call them—would then high five each other, laugh some more, and behave as if they had just got done with a sexual orgy.

I watched all this from the safety of the left balcony. I was too timid to stand on a stool and poke my head out of the window to get a clear view lest they notice me and make me a target as well. Instead, I kept the window pane slightly open and watched through the gap that permitted my gaze quite a fair view of the proceedings.

I remember I did not quite like what I saw. And since my reasoning at that point in time equated dislike to hate, I thought I hated them all. Hate is quite a strong emotion for that time of anyone’s childhood. I had felt it often in my being—much before Holi and the Lenten season of that year—and it was not something I liked to pet into a friend.

Yet, here that emotion was and I let it be my companion only because I mistook it for Disgust. That fine line that divided the two was invisible to me, and it would be so until I found myself in my ‘30s.

Photo credit: AdamCohn via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

I continued watching the spectacle way into the afternoon. I had not much to do despite the approaching exams and I had read all the books that found their way into my hands. So, I allowed myself this spectacle - lurid and vexing though it was.

All this while, Father was in the right balcony - very much the picture of a contractor. Do this, do that, he said to the carpenter. Fix the wire mesh in this way, not that way. Hammer the nail in here - not there! Screw in the hinges this side, not that. Do how much you can, he said, but get a considerable amount of it done today.

The carpenter obeyed. And his obedience got him to realise he had run short of about a dozen nails or screws. There was only one remedy to that: To go get some from the hardware shop downstairs.

Photo credit: Elle Rae_ via Foter.com / CC BY-SA

“Gary, go get these.”

I closed the window pane and looked at Father.

“Me?”

“Yes! Go go! The store might close. Fast! Go!”

“But it’s Holi! I don’t want to go out there! They’ll throw colour on me.”

In response to that, Father walked towards me and “Oh come on!” he said, “Nothing will happen!”

Those words seem very encouraging. But the tone Father picked to put them in made them sound as if I was not doing the right thing by disobeying him.

I refused. I said I am not going and made a cranky face.

Which is when Father dropped all pretences of being nice and yelled: “Go down to the shop NOW!”

“But Daddy they’ll throw colour on me!” I began, my voice crying much before my eyes could, “I don’t like that Daddy!”

Father crumpled his face into a disgruntled ball of expressions and let loose another diktat: “Nothing doing!” he hollered, “Here! Take this money and go get them! Go! GO!”

I can still see how everyone in the house reacted to what I just described for you. 

Photo credit: westpark via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Mother Dearest tried to intervene but it was a feeble effort. “You don’t interfere,” Father shot back at her, “when I tell him something to do, why must you interfere?”

So Mother - in the interest of peace and calm - collected her intervention and put it all to use in the kitchen.

Grandfather had pretty much nothing to say. He knew how hotheaded his son was, and so he elected to stand nonviolently in the hall and watch the proceedings.

As for Sister Dearest, she kept herself away from it all. I don’t quite remember what she was doing at that moment - she had her exams to prepare for of course, so she may have buried her head in her books. Or she may have giggled at how spectacularly helpless I looked - I really don't remember very well. But whatever it was that she did, it contributed nothing at all to keep me from going down to the hardware store for a packet of nails/screws.

And so, I slipped into my sandals, looked at them all in the house as if I was about to flee the country, and walked out of the door into the darkness of the passageway outside.

To know what happens next, read: The Holiday: Part 3