On Phagwah day, Guyana will dazzle with a kaleidoscope of hues. Colourful streets and people of all ethnic backgrounds would be draped in vibrant yellow, blue, pink and green powder, abeer and abrac.
Holi is the festival of colour that celebrates the victory of good over evil, and is a celebration of the arrival of spring and harvests to come. The central ritual of this ‘festival of colours’ is throwing and applying coloured water and powder on friends and family.
Dry coloured powder is called ‘gulal’, and when mixed with water it is called ‘rang’. It is then filled into ‘pichkaris’ containers or what we may call here ‘water guns’. These are filled with coloured water and sprayed on fellow revellers.
Tables with bags of gulal are lined up as neighbours and family await the other to enter the grounds.
But most importantly, Holi is the day when you would see the streets and homes doused in almost every colour imaginable.
Each colour has significance-religious and otherwise.
Fun with abeer
There is a colour for almost every occasion, moment, or celebration. Each colour symbolises a force in life, and thus colour and life are inseparable. While the most popular colours are the brightest such as blue, yellow, red, purple, pink, and green, there are colours that are noticeably absent. These include black and white.
Though white symbolises a sense of purity, it is also a colour of mourning.
Widows in India retire to a white-only dress code. And while black is considered ugly, evil, and undesirable, it is relied upon heavily to ward off evil, as is evident in the ceremony of putting a black dot on a new-born baby’s face to ward off the evil eye.
During the early days, the gulal colours of Holi were made at home using flowers of the tree, otherwise called the ‘Flame of the Forest’. The plucked flowers were sun-dried and then ground to a fine dust.
The powdered dust, once mixed in water, gave way to the most brilliant hue of saffron- red. The saffron-red pigment and coloured powdered talc is called ‘abeer’. Every colour means something special in the psyche of those in India, and these our ancestors have passed on to us. Red, for instance, is a mark of matrimony.
Red is a dominant colour with Indian brides since it symbolises fertility, love, beauty, and, most importantly, is a sign of a married woman. It is considered custom in the ways of Hinduism for married women to wear red ‘Kum Kum’ or otherwise known as ‘Vermilion’ powder on their foreheads to indicate they are married.
Yellow is yet another important colour in the Indian psyche. Yellow is almost synonymous with turmeric or dye, an ingredient of great importance at auspicious functions across religions.
It is perhaps revered more so because of its medicinal use right from the ancient times. The colour of the revered god in Hinduism, lord Krishna is blue. As per the ancient writings, the colour of Krishna is black or darkish blue. Green symbolises new beginnings, harvest, and fertility.
“Abeer and abrac, being multi-coloured, reminds us of the beauty of nature, and since it is the dawning of the spring season – the heralding of life and fertility. The kaleidoscope of colour brings forth merriment and festivity synonymous with the season as well,” said Pandit Rudra Sharma from the Radha Krishna Mandir in an interview with Guyana Times Sunday Magazine.
These traditional colours have now been supplemented by metallic and various previously unimaginable shades and mixtures. But the spirit of the festival remains the same. The diverse colours we play with on Holi should make us think of our colourful, diverse culture in Guyana. Holi continues to be a festival celebrated in great revelry and belief, and brings people of various social and ethnic backgrounds together as one. (Taken from Guyana Times Sunday Magazine)
