Just as I enter the main gate of my house, my four-year-old nephew comes down running and sprinkles water all over my uniform with his pichkari. Just a while ago, in a momentary sigh of relief, I had been thankful to God and to myself for succeeding in escaping the shots from lolas in the streets which could zoom in anytime from different angles and elevations and hideouts, while I walked my way home from the bus station.

No sooner had I presumed the streets safer and the teens more civilised at Holi compared to the yesteryears than this act from a four-year-old made me negate my point of view. “Happy Holi”, he would shout and run away when I tried to catch hold of his pichkari.

Today is the festival of colours (and tomorrow in the Terai), and who else can be happier than the children! Playing with water till the clothes got soaked and throwing colours at others until the faces became unrecognisable were the two things I most enjoyed as a child at Fagu Purnima. For grown-ups, too, it is a day for eating, drinking and merry-making — an occasion to forget the disappointments, frustrations and the grind of normal days. I would go on a wild spree with friends and relatives around. When I came back home with the face as dark as black peat and clothes a piebald of fabric, it was always my mother who had tough time washing them out or giving me a good scrub to prepare me for the school the next day.

Celebrating Holi with schoolmates is great fun. I still cherish the celebrations as a student in one of the colleges in South India, despite the festival’s insignificance in the South. I reminisce about the trail we have left of the festival for every batch of new students with the floors and walls in the girls’ hostel soaked and painted in a motley of colours.

Holi, though I celebrate it with less gusto and fanfare now than in the days of yore, is one festival which constantly encourages me to be playful and alive, colourful and vibrant, happy and cheerful. Perhaps it is a reminder that life should be enjoyed to the full. I wish I could still run away with a pichkari like a four-year-old and sprinkle watercolours at everyone and everywhere shouting Holi rey.