Holi used to be my favourite festival when I was a child. For folks who are not familiar with Holi, it entails smearing people with colour, dunking them with water and eating lots of food, all in no particular order. All you do is forgiven and forgotten. And you can pretty much do what you would not on any other day. Even newspapers come up with crazy headlines on that day. The slogan for the day is 'Bura na mano Holi hai', loosely translated as 'Don't mind it is Holi.'
In most places in India, during Holi, thandai is the drink to have - a drink to cool the body and warm the soul, an awesome drink made of milk, sugar, almonds, saffron, black/white pepper and other exotic nuts and spices. It is generally a pale, milky yellow. In some cases it is a milky, yellowish green. This green colour is achieved by adding bhang in the thandai. Bhang happens to be derived from the leaves of a rather well known plant - cannabis. Consumption of bhang during Holi in thandai, sweets and by itself (little green balls) is accepted and in many parts of the country special thekas or shops are set up by government tender with the express purpose of selling bhang during the period of Holi.
In Indore thandai with bhang is a tradition.
It so happened that my short tenure in Indore coincided with Holi.
I used to work in a small media start-up with a very friendly atmosphere and some great people. I reached office slightly early one morning. It was a holiday, but I didn't know that and anyway I could never figure out what one did with off-days till my second year of working. Besides, it was such a nice place to work that almost everyone showed up at office seven days a week, public holidays notwithstanding.
Well, I landed up in office a bit early and found one more person there, Vip. He had in his hand a large, empty bottle of cola and he was frantically searching the office for something. I asked him what he was looking for.
"Bottles," he said.
"You have one in your hand," I pointed out to him.
"Bottle-ss!" he said again, this time emphasizing the 's' at the end.
I knew him well. I dropped the questions and started looking for bottle-ss. It must be important.
We scoured the office and found, in addition to the one bottle he was already in possession of, three coffee mugs and one small running bottle. Not that the bottle was very mobile, but it was to be used while running. Vip seemed despondant.
"This is crap!" He exclaimed at our inability to find more bottles in the office.
I asked him again the purpose collecting these receptacles of water.
"Its Holi," he said simply.
I thought he wanted bottles to dunk people with, in which case I suggested we get a few buckets.
"Good idea, but it is very hard to carry a bucket on a bike."
"Bike?!" I was quite confused now. I had visions of Vip riding a bike carrying buckets of water, dunking people around the city. While not unheard of, such thing were typically done when one is a stupid teenager, not when one is seen as a pillar of a growing and well recognized business in the city.
"What do you want to do with a bucket on a bike?" I asked. I wanted to be able to step in at the right time to stop my friend from doing something that he might regret.
"We need to get thandai. We can't have Holi without thandai. We need bottles, lots of them to bring it over." This was an angle I had not foreseen and it all made sense now. I redoubled my efforts at looking for bottles. Apparently the thekas were eco-friendly places. Bring your own container for take-away or use their glasses and drink what you can on the spot.
Slowly people started trickling into the office. People who were quite aware that it was Holi and who steadily added to our collection of containers. In a while we had eight bottles and the office had sixteen people. Vip did a quick poll of what each would drink. Folks said they'd have one glass or two or three. The total came to about eight litres. Vip doubled the figure. His experience said that those who said one would drink three and ones who said four would drink ten. We would be able to carry about thirteen litres of thandai in the available containers. A bit below ideal, but would need to do.
Wiz and I volunteered to go and buy the thandai from the old city. He took his scooter, I held the bottles and rode pillion. We managed to reach the shop without incident, though in a couple of places folks flagged us down to put colour on us, rather than treat us as a moving target, which potentially could have been dangerous.
It was a small dark shop, consisting entirely of a raised platform about a metre high that served as both the shopfloor and office and darker recesses that presumably served as the warehouse. Outside, by way of advertising, were two ply-wood boards, rather worse for wear, proclaiming to world: "Bhang Theka" and "Thandai" that someone had written in chalk. They were tied up with string and idly swayed in the breeze. Since this was a seasonal business, operating only during these few days of Holi, the boards looked like they saw the light of day only for this week of the year.
On the left corner of the platform sat a man taking orders and ensuring fulfilment. There were no receipts or tokens issued. He simply remembered everything. Behind him, there were people engaged in various activities for making thandai - some were grinding the ingredients using a stone pestle, some were mixing the milk and sugar and finally some were sieving the thandai through a cloth into a large metal container. Till this point, the thandai was a pale, milky yellow. Here, the order-taker asked us how green we wanted it to be. Neither Wiz nor I knew for sure how much so we asked him what he suggested.
"Up to you," he said. "Depends on how much fun you want to have."
We asked him to put two balls per litre. The concoction was sieved once again, this time with the two balls of bhang. Wiz felt the resulting colour of the drink was much too yellow to be considered green. We decided on the scientific approach and sampled the stuff at varying levels of green till we felt that we had arrived at The Real Taste. This remaining half a glass of The Real Taste was shown to the gentleman taking the order and we asked him to create our order in this colour.
We got our bottles filled with the now indisputably green liquid and began the journey back to our office.
This was easier said than done. Carrying eight bottles made of plastic on a scooter is not hard. Doing the same when the bottles are filled with 13 litres of liquid is another matter altogether. We made a sort of nest between us on the scooter and including stuffing a bottle each in our shirts, we managed to account for seven. The eighth Wiz jammed behind his footbrake. Which seemed like a good idea as we didn't intend to stop anywhere on the way back, though it did necessitate us having to glide through three traffic signals when they were red. It wasn't so bad because by that time due to all the sampling we had done, the world seemed to be moving in a very smooth, elegant and stately manner. Wiz had evidently done this before as he switched off his scooter a couple of hundred yards before the office, so we glided in gently and he used the bicycle shed wall to effect a complete stop. By the time we reached office and handed over our cargo for the festivities to begin, everything was positively in slow-motion.
We were accoladed a triumphal parade by our office mates with lots of loud cheering, all the way to the canteen next to office. Everyone enjoyed the food and drink and we played a game of cricket as well in the disused area next to the office. Everything there happened in slow motion as well but with remarkable picture clarity. Finally after feeling ravenously hungry and eating what I only remember as mountains of food (gluttony, apparently, is a side effect of bhang) we all went home. Except one guy who was trying figure out how to eat a kachori since it was round and he didn't know where to get in from.
NP and I were flatmates then and we were sitting in the living room of our apartment, at peace with the world, vegetating after the mammoth eating session when NP looked up and in the inimitable Indore way said "Broyo, I think the ceiling fan is going to fall off."
I looked up to the ceiling. The fan seemed fine to me, but I wasn't sure. "Why?"
"It's askew." he said.
I was thinking of when the lease expired and whether the fan would stay up till then when NP dragged a chair and unscrewed the fan from the ceiling. I don't know if you have ever tried it, but it is very hard work. I held the fan while he tinkered around with the screw and the fan-hook. Finally he put the fan back in and got off the chair. "There! Now it is fine."
Ten minutes later he said, "Broyo, the fan's gonna fall. I know it." He took it off and put it back up again. Three more times. I don't recall exactly how he stopped. I do recall he didn't remember any of this the next morning.
The following day brought forth many such stories from the thandai gang. How one guy went to sleep with a 29 inch TV in his lap watching the plains of Africa saying "I can see it! I can see it!" and another person who ate every cooked thing in his parents house and another bloke who, feeling that everything was much too slow, lay his bike down by the roadside to let it rest and slept next to it. Of course there were a lot stories of people who kept on laughing or kept on crying or kept on shampooing their hair or kept on shaving, but those were the usual stories.
Holi in Indore was memorable.
In most places in India, during Holi, thandai is the drink to have - a drink to cool the body and warm the soul, an awesome drink made of milk, sugar, almonds, saffron, black/white pepper and other exotic nuts and spices. It is generally a pale, milky yellow. In some cases it is a milky, yellowish green. This green colour is achieved by adding bhang in the thandai. Bhang happens to be derived from the leaves of a rather well known plant - cannabis. Consumption of bhang during Holi in thandai, sweets and by itself (little green balls) is accepted and in many parts of the country special thekas or shops are set up by government tender with the express purpose of selling bhang during the period of Holi.
In Indore thandai with bhang is a tradition.
It so happened that my short tenure in Indore coincided with Holi.
I used to work in a small media start-up with a very friendly atmosphere and some great people. I reached office slightly early one morning. It was a holiday, but I didn't know that and anyway I could never figure out what one did with off-days till my second year of working. Besides, it was such a nice place to work that almost everyone showed up at office seven days a week, public holidays notwithstanding.
Well, I landed up in office a bit early and found one more person there, Vip. He had in his hand a large, empty bottle of cola and he was frantically searching the office for something. I asked him what he was looking for.
"Bottles," he said.
"You have one in your hand," I pointed out to him.
"Bottle-ss!" he said again, this time emphasizing the 's' at the end.
I knew him well. I dropped the questions and started looking for bottle-ss. It must be important.
We scoured the office and found, in addition to the one bottle he was already in possession of, three coffee mugs and one small running bottle. Not that the bottle was very mobile, but it was to be used while running. Vip seemed despondant.
"This is crap!" He exclaimed at our inability to find more bottles in the office.
I asked him again the purpose collecting these receptacles of water.
"Its Holi," he said simply.
I thought he wanted bottles to dunk people with, in which case I suggested we get a few buckets.
"Good idea, but it is very hard to carry a bucket on a bike."
"Bike?!" I was quite confused now. I had visions of Vip riding a bike carrying buckets of water, dunking people around the city. While not unheard of, such thing were typically done when one is a stupid teenager, not when one is seen as a pillar of a growing and well recognized business in the city.
"What do you want to do with a bucket on a bike?" I asked. I wanted to be able to step in at the right time to stop my friend from doing something that he might regret.
"We need to get thandai. We can't have Holi without thandai. We need bottles, lots of them to bring it over." This was an angle I had not foreseen and it all made sense now. I redoubled my efforts at looking for bottles. Apparently the thekas were eco-friendly places. Bring your own container for take-away or use their glasses and drink what you can on the spot.
Slowly people started trickling into the office. People who were quite aware that it was Holi and who steadily added to our collection of containers. In a while we had eight bottles and the office had sixteen people. Vip did a quick poll of what each would drink. Folks said they'd have one glass or two or three. The total came to about eight litres. Vip doubled the figure. His experience said that those who said one would drink three and ones who said four would drink ten. We would be able to carry about thirteen litres of thandai in the available containers. A bit below ideal, but would need to do.
Wiz and I volunteered to go and buy the thandai from the old city. He took his scooter, I held the bottles and rode pillion. We managed to reach the shop without incident, though in a couple of places folks flagged us down to put colour on us, rather than treat us as a moving target, which potentially could have been dangerous.
It was a small dark shop, consisting entirely of a raised platform about a metre high that served as both the shopfloor and office and darker recesses that presumably served as the warehouse. Outside, by way of advertising, were two ply-wood boards, rather worse for wear, proclaiming to world: "Bhang Theka" and "Thandai" that someone had written in chalk. They were tied up with string and idly swayed in the breeze. Since this was a seasonal business, operating only during these few days of Holi, the boards looked like they saw the light of day only for this week of the year.
On the left corner of the platform sat a man taking orders and ensuring fulfilment. There were no receipts or tokens issued. He simply remembered everything. Behind him, there were people engaged in various activities for making thandai - some were grinding the ingredients using a stone pestle, some were mixing the milk and sugar and finally some were sieving the thandai through a cloth into a large metal container. Till this point, the thandai was a pale, milky yellow. Here, the order-taker asked us how green we wanted it to be. Neither Wiz nor I knew for sure how much so we asked him what he suggested.
"Up to you," he said. "Depends on how much fun you want to have."
We asked him to put two balls per litre. The concoction was sieved once again, this time with the two balls of bhang. Wiz felt the resulting colour of the drink was much too yellow to be considered green. We decided on the scientific approach and sampled the stuff at varying levels of green till we felt that we had arrived at The Real Taste. This remaining half a glass of The Real Taste was shown to the gentleman taking the order and we asked him to create our order in this colour.
We got our bottles filled with the now indisputably green liquid and began the journey back to our office.
This was easier said than done. Carrying eight bottles made of plastic on a scooter is not hard. Doing the same when the bottles are filled with 13 litres of liquid is another matter altogether. We made a sort of nest between us on the scooter and including stuffing a bottle each in our shirts, we managed to account for seven. The eighth Wiz jammed behind his footbrake. Which seemed like a good idea as we didn't intend to stop anywhere on the way back, though it did necessitate us having to glide through three traffic signals when they were red. It wasn't so bad because by that time due to all the sampling we had done, the world seemed to be moving in a very smooth, elegant and stately manner. Wiz had evidently done this before as he switched off his scooter a couple of hundred yards before the office, so we glided in gently and he used the bicycle shed wall to effect a complete stop. By the time we reached office and handed over our cargo for the festivities to begin, everything was positively in slow-motion.
We were accoladed a triumphal parade by our office mates with lots of loud cheering, all the way to the canteen next to office. Everyone enjoyed the food and drink and we played a game of cricket as well in the disused area next to the office. Everything there happened in slow motion as well but with remarkable picture clarity. Finally after feeling ravenously hungry and eating what I only remember as mountains of food (gluttony, apparently, is a side effect of bhang) we all went home. Except one guy who was trying figure out how to eat a kachori since it was round and he didn't know where to get in from.
NP and I were flatmates then and we were sitting in the living room of our apartment, at peace with the world, vegetating after the mammoth eating session when NP looked up and in the inimitable Indore way said "Broyo, I think the ceiling fan is going to fall off."
I looked up to the ceiling. The fan seemed fine to me, but I wasn't sure. "Why?"
"It's askew." he said.
I was thinking of when the lease expired and whether the fan would stay up till then when NP dragged a chair and unscrewed the fan from the ceiling. I don't know if you have ever tried it, but it is very hard work. I held the fan while he tinkered around with the screw and the fan-hook. Finally he put the fan back in and got off the chair. "There! Now it is fine."
Ten minutes later he said, "Broyo, the fan's gonna fall. I know it." He took it off and put it back up again. Three more times. I don't recall exactly how he stopped. I do recall he didn't remember any of this the next morning.
The following day brought forth many such stories from the thandai gang. How one guy went to sleep with a 29 inch TV in his lap watching the plains of Africa saying "I can see it! I can see it!" and another person who ate every cooked thing in his parents house and another bloke who, feeling that everything was much too slow, lay his bike down by the roadside to let it rest and slept next to it. Of course there were a lot stories of people who kept on laughing or kept on crying or kept on shampooing their hair or kept on shaving, but those were the usual stories.
Holi in Indore was memorable.
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