Opinion Happier Holi: For two years, many Indians have been robbed of revelry. It’s still a time for caution, but things are better

Festivals, anthropologists tell us, serve many purposes. They can be occasions for exchanging gifts and, as a result, affirming social hierarchies — think of the paltry bonus or rationed piece of dessert offices provide during Diwali. But there’s another kind of festival as well, when society as a whole decides that it’s time for the rules to break down, to engage in primordial, communitarian revelry. In large parts of India, Holi serves that purpose. And for two years, thanks to a pandemic that is both a great leveller and isolator, many Indians were robbed of the safety valve of celebration.

Holi, perhaps more than any other festival, is about transgression. In colleges, students splash water on their professors, in housing colonies the old and young alike take great pleasure in putting colour on each others’ faces. There’s even a permissiveness around inebriation. In a society where hierarchy — who you can eat with, love etc. — is often strictly enforced, Holi is a day of relative equality. And given how much inequality has grown during the pandemic, people need a splash of colour more than ever. Now, for the first time since 2019, the fear of the pandemic isn’t overshadowing the prospect of having a little fun.

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Most Indians should take comfort in the fact that they are vaccinated. Yet, the temptation to play Holi perhaps needs to be tempered. The virus is, at best, dormant. So, perhaps, a pichkari; colours applied with masks on. For those who enjoy Holi, it is not quite the same as the time before the pandemic. But, it is certainly a happier Holi than the last two years.

This editorial first appeared in the print edition on March 18, 2022 under the title ‘Happier Holi’.