HoliThe festival of colour

The following is an extract from the travel book A River of Life: Travels through Modern India.

The briskness of business keeps on well into the night, in restaurants, grocery stores, bookshops, corner stalls, all of which are open beyond the usual hours. Bright lights have been erected around the grounds of the GPO, floodlighting the streets. There are bonfires on street corners and revellers celebrating.

I ask what it is all about and am told, "This, holy." I am not sure what he means by 'holy', but I enjoy the spectacle and stay out late.

The rabble of people, rowdier than I have ever known them in my time in India, keeps me awake till well into the small hours. I still don't know what is being celebrated, but I enjoy the thought that I have experienced one of India's many festivals.

But I haven't, not really. It was just a foretaste. I wake the next day and immediately realize something is up. It is hard not to notice. The streets are utterly deserted. There are no pedestrians, no buses, no autorickshaws to be seen anywhere. The city is embalmed in the eeriest of silences. It is like something out of a science fiction film. Have alien craft swooped down in the night and sucked humanity off the face of the Earth? Are there Triffids staggering along streets that were once the preserve of people and cattle?

It is a nice idea, certainly, and one I entertain for as long as possible, India's problems of overcrowding and exploding population solved at a stroke. But the sounds in reception give the game away, not the shambling of predatory plants, nor the tentacular slithering of bug-eyed beasts, but simply the voices of men, talking, laughing. And nor are the streets as abandoned as they had at first appeared: an occasional scooter tears along, usually with two riders, the passenger at the back cheering and waving, and sometimes the one at the front too; there are also a few pedestrians to be seen here and there in small groups.

"This, holy," one of the men at reception informs me.

"Why holy?" I ask? "What do you mean?"

"No, not holy," he tells me cryptically. "Holy."

The man explains, with the help of his fellows - there are three of them there at reception - and a quick thumb through my guidebook does the rest. Not holy, but holi. It is the Hindu festival of colour, one of the most exuberant in the whole calendar. To mark the end of winter and the advent of spring, people shower and spatter and generally daub one another with coloured water and paint. The festival is particularly enjoyed by followers of the blue-skinned god Krishna, whose general frivolity is considered to be in imitation of the god's play with gopis, the daughters and wives of cowherds. Gazing out from the safety of my room I can see that the stray bands of people, and those occasional scooterists, are stained by paints, showing as explosions of purple over their faces and necks, shirts, hands.

My prospects don't look good, in the way of food in particular. I take stock of what I have: several bottles of water; some bananas; some small rolls; some powdered milk. I will be okay for breakfast, though after that I will be down to four half-size rolls and the powdered milk. Had I known (and I should have guessed, from the briskness of business last night), I would have stocked up. But I still hold out hope. Surely somewhere will be open for business? It is slim hope at best, the deathly desertion of the streets making an open shop an unlikely proposition.

I finally venture out around lunch time, wearing my least favourite clothes and taking nothing with me bar my cricket hat, valuables in a money belt, and the laughter and rather knowing smiles from the men at reception.

I don't get far before I run into trouble. Descending the steps, to the backstreet beside my guesthouse, I encounter my first band of marauding colourists. They grin at my approach. They are bedecked in purple, red, green, a rainbow of colour - though mostly it is purple - while I stand there clean and pristine, not a spot of colour on my shirt, not a mark on my trousers besides the grime of travel and general living. My large white hat must be an especial temptation.

They circle me, laughing, teasing, until one of them - "Please," he says, "do not mind, I am meaning no offence" - comes up and hugs me, transferring colour from his chest to mine, slapping my neck with his powder-paint-loaded hands and trailing purple fingers across my cheeks. Another of them hugs me, the rest shake my hand, and then they walk on down the alley, laughing amongst themselves, searching for other lone victims or rival bands.

Just a few minutes in the streets and it becomes apparent that my stomach is in for a big disappointment. Everywhere is shut. Metal grills have been drawn down in shop fronts and padlocked, protection from bandit colourists and their hit-and-run raids. Who could possibly do business on a day like today? Merchants would be worried about dye-damage to their wares, shopkeepers about their customers being attacked. The town would descend into a state of anarchy and lawlessness. As it is, despite the rife opportunities for determined looters, the police presence is nil. Almost every presence is nil. Most people are at home, celebrating holi with their families behind locked doors. The occasional scooter aside, and the odd band of high-spirited young men, the cows and I have the streets to ourselves.

At the junctions away from central Hazratganj are the remains of the bonfires I had seen last night, heaps of ash and charred logs.

"They are symbol of Holika." Another group of colourists have found me. Nikhil, a student at King George's Medical University in the city, is their spokeman. "They are symbolizing destruction of demoness Holika by Krishna." He adds more details, and I fill in the gaps later, conning my guides to India. According to tradition, Prahlada, a prince and follower of Krishna, continued to worship the god despite the commandment of his father the king, who had ordered all his subjects to worship him instead. Prahlada had been condemned to death by burning and was carried into the flames by Holika, the embodiment of winter and evil, who was supposedly immune from the ravages the fire; but Krishna interceded, Prahlada emerged unharmed, and Holika was destroyed. The bonfires were built to commemorate this event and reiterate the triumph of virtue over evil, as well as the more mundane celebration of the end of winter and the advent of spring ("We are celebrating arrival of spring now," Nikhil says). Some of the more high-spirited celebrants would, apparently, walk across the hot coals in a display of bravado, although I had seen none of that last night.

I wander through the city, in the company of Nikhil and his band for a while - they seem to think it isn't safe for me - over to Sikandrabagh and the botanical gardens. I hope to be able to take another look round and take refuge from the marauders, who catch me twice more on my wanderings: my shirt is a mess of colour, my face itches violently under its coating of powder paints. The gates of Sikandrabagh, however, are shut and locked. The uniformed guard inside, poking his head sheepishly outside his sentry hut, tells me there will be no admittance today.

He retreats swiftly into the safety of his hut as a squadron of scooters pull up. One of the back-seat passengers leaps down, approaches me, arms open wide for an embrace. All of the colourists I have met to date have been purple, with smatterings of red, dabs of green, little else; he offers me gold.

I accept his embrace.