#FolkInVogue - Revisiting Roots

It’s in the click of my heels,  

The bend of my hair,  

the palm of my hand,  

The need for my care.  

’Cause I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

- Maya Angelou

The evening of 30th March, 2016, was beautiful for many reasons. These reasons, primarily, would fall under three categories - the Place, the People and the Cause. 

Place - We were gathered inside the Asian Paints Color Store, a place I love calling my personal wonderland, for the amount of ideas, expressions and creativity it inspires. A store which gives you live experiences of how wall colours alter and enhance the look your spaces, it has given me many a cool ideas to implement back at home and feel thoroughly satisfied about. 

People - Gathered in the store were some women, who had succeeded in creating an impact by following the call of their passion. They belonged to diverse fields, but were united by the conviction they carried on their faces aglow with the happiness of being together. Each had a story worthy of sharing, and each shared personal narratives worthy of putting into wisdom capsules. 

Cause - A unique concept which blended the tradition with fashion, Asian Paints conceptualised #FolkInVogue to grant greater contemporary relevance to our many dying folk art forms. Gond, Pattachitra, Madhubani and Warli art forms found manifestation on dreamcatchers, scarves, vases and mugs. 

What's even better is that one could witness all these art forms in action - artists practising these many styles of painting were invited to the store to give all the gathered ladies a first hand experience, and even a brief tutelage into practising the art. 

A simple gathering of some stunning ladies, by the end of the evening, turned out to be an experience worth being remembered for a lifetime. Asian Paints surmised the life story of all these ladies in flawless videos, the screening of which evoked pretty emotions in everyone's eyes. In the past too, I have witnessed Asian Paints curate experiences which give voice to diverse shades of art - my own association with them began through poetry.  As they celebrate the modern woman, carrying ahead her roots with elegance, why don't you also attempt to revisit traditions and see how they may apply to your contemporary living spaces? Hop into their Color Store today! 

Leap Into Some Love

I had been researching for an article on Leap Years and Leap Days, when the beauty of the concept struck me. Leap Days are days which exist lesser than the other days. These are days which go unnaccounted for. If you're working today, you're working without pay. If you were born today, you'll have to bank on either 28th February or 1st March as the official day you came into existence. Facebook will have nothing to show you today, unless from a really far off past.

And best of all, if you're forming memories today, you cannot mark an annual anniversary for them. Which makes the nostalgia invisible, or eternal.

Think about it. Today is a day you must obviously try and live more than the others, because, like I said, it will exist lesser than all the other days on the calendar. The scientific reason, of course, is to take care of the anomaly which arises between the calendar year and the solar year, but that reason makes no difference to my life. Despite this adjustment, there is still an error of timing left, which is adjusted by not counting multiples of 100 as Leap Years, unless they are multiples of 400 also. Too many numbers in there, and they still do not guarantee precision. Again, precision makes no difference to my existence, but reasons for forming formless memories do.

If you've seen the (quite disastrous) movie Leap Year, you would be aware of the Irish tradition where women could propose to men on a Leap Day, and fear no refusal. Some say, it is a day when no man is safe, because his denial may cost him a kiss, a silk dress, or a pair of gloves to be given to the lady who popped the question. This latter tradition, arguably, started in 13th century Scotland, when Queen Margaret decreed that on 29th February, a lady may unabashedly propose to any man she fancied. Rest assured, she won't go home empty handed.

It is quite apt, then, that the extra day be added to the month of love. No one really knows for sure why February was left with only 28 days in a calendar where all the other months boast of far more. There are legends, none with a strong grounding though. Leap Day gives this pretty month a chance at equality, just short of it though. And the more I think about this day of fleeting importance, the more its importance becomes apparent to me.

Even though modern existence robs most of us off the luxury of time, I'll still have a plan to utilise this extra day for moments, tasks and conversations which are too important to be archived. February 29th, in the modern idiom, should become the day where we all say out loud those things we've held onto for too long, without the fear of listener's judgement, or retaliation, or condescension. All those three are contemporary malaises, which deserve at least a day's bravery to cure. And if your brave admissions of love or longing (or desire, or any curbed feeling) are met with unpleasant reactions, there is always a kiss, a silk garment, or pile of books to ask for (because gloves really make no sense to our times).

There are times we push hard to make a moment happen, and then we wish it away because it turned out to be too unpleasant for our heart to digest. Congrats, here you have a day which you won't have to wish away, because it will not hit your calendar till it becomes a long lost memory, which, a leap of years later, you would only smile back with fondness over. At least I would. I like prolonging intense moments, by forming calendar memories of them. Today, I won't get to do that. It's my day to be brave, and yours too. If you've withheld a sentiment from me - inbox it right in! I have my most nonchalant self waiting to hear.

I really hope we make a tradition out of it. I would. In the personal utopia I have constructed with some kind people and kinder words. May Queen Margaret's decree be followed - a moment of love, or a bar of Silk, find your happiness either way, and then, if needed, forget the day ever existed :)

Live and let go, I believe, is a lovely motto for our age.

When Colours Turn Muddy

Is Holi really the festival of colours? Well, in some imaginative, idealistic notions, it must be. However, as a non-participant on Holi festivities, yesterday I saw less of an iridescent display of colours, and more of black faces, muddy water and police patrol-plus-barricading, enough to give a feel of an imminent curfew. Is that what the festival of Holi has come to mean and symbolise?

Within the comfort of my house, I smeared colours on the faces of a handful of neighbours. Not for once did I feel like stepping out. Not alone, at any cost. Why? Because Holi has come to mean a threat to me and my body. I am sure a lot of girls would agree with what I am trying to convey here. There are so many outstation girl students I know, who, if devoid of a large and protective friends’ circle, lock themselves up in their rooms, too scared to venture out till late afternoon, when the Holi festivities have subsided. What kind of a festival is it which restricts a girl’s mobility or makes her feel unsafe ?

It doesn’t start (or end) on the Holi day. It begins much before. A week in advance, suddenly, the guys of your city get a free licence to accost your bodies with water-balloons, often also filled with colour dyes. Now, I am not saying that girls are their only target, but perhaps my exposure has only been limited to that aspect of their festive mischiefs. An innovation I recently came to know off, via troubled rantings of a college friend is stuffing water balloons with eggs and then using them as a harmless Holi weapon. How cool? Right? No. It is not. It is harassment, to say the least. On our way from college to an all-girl’s market trip, I and two other friends of mine were hit by two water balloons in a moving auto. I know the pain and the impact it created on my arm, and can only imagine how my other friend, who was hit on the cheek, would have felt. All this in the name of festival fun. Needlessly said, the girl’s day out had to be cut short, for who would want to roam around in market places with wet clothes, clinging to one’s body. The world is not short of ogling men now, is it? Oh, and it was not some innocent five year-olds who had played Holi with us in their own twisted way, but lanky teenaged lads. I wonder where do they adopt this tradition from, if it can be called that. One more water-balloon assault later, I decided to stay away from travelling to college till Holi gets over.

What perhaps I have dictated is a minor ordeal, if one may even call it that. The pain my arm experienced subsided in no time. There are, however, many hideous tales of Holi molestations I have heard from here and there, which stay on to pain girls till years later. Holi is a licence for men to touch, run and even maul a female body. Have you ever felt a male hand touching you at inappropriate places under the pretext of colouring you up because that is what the tradition demands? Have you ever seen men, ostensibly your family members, first drench you in front of a crowd, and then admire the shape of your body as the intoxication of bhang strengthens? I am not claiming this is the rule. I am only saying that this happens too. I have been lucky it never did with me. But many of my acquaintances have not been so fortunate. Even worse, many, I am sure, are not aware how an excuse of Holi is used by men to intrude into what is their space, the threshold of which should only be crossed upon gaining consent.

All these thoughts came running to my head after I saw a large gang fight break out in a slum dwelling visible from my house. All faces were painted black, the only difference perceivable being in the shape of bodies distinguishing men from women. Intoxication and loud music perhaps gave a fillip to whatever the argument was about and fight of the muddied faces kept on getting stronger. What caught my attention in this madness was a woman caught in the exchange of blows, who could only manage to wriggle free when she was thrown outside the fighting group to land on her haunches on the wet ground. The next I noticed was a police van hauling up the ruffians (that’s how they all looked) and dead silence returning to the field of frenzied celebrations.

May be this is not the way the civil classes celebrate Holi. They have their other civil ways of making this a festival of fun, amusement and entertainment. Holi is said to be the festival which is a great leveller. All faces, coloured in similar hues, are made free of distinctions of caste and class. The one distinction that does remain, however is that of gender. Perhaps that is the reason why a DU girls’ hostel had to seek a ban on a Holi procession, alleging obscenity in the all-male parade taken out in Delhi University’s North Campus every year. The girl residents claim that crude remarks and indecent gestures made by those boys amount to harassment, and this despite being accompanied by police each year. This is the condition of our education eden, infiltrated, of course, by some who are labelled ‘anti-social elements’.

Amid all these harrowing feelings about Holi, what gives me pleasure is the soft touch of my ten-year old nephew’s fingers applying variegated hues of gulal on my face. It gives me pleasure to see sweet gujias being exchanged among neighbours and relatives who scarce find an opportunity to meet in their otherwise hectic schedules. It also gives me pleasure to see the sweet playfulness dissolve and dissipate, for one day, hierarchies within families. And the best piece of news I heard was from Benaras, where the widows this year celebrated a floral Holi. Radha and Krishna, whose Holi celebrations shade our legends and folk songs, would be happy to see a dash of colour in the lives of those consigned to colourlessness. It were the sufi peers who saw Holi as the coming together of communities and smearing on each other not just gulal, but love. I wonder where the spirit of Radha Krishna, of the sufi traditions of Holi is lost.

Still, I do hope you all had a wonderful Holi, which was safe, vibrant and full of mirth!

Image Source - Photographs by the hugely talented Snigdha Manoli Menda. Used with permission.