How Free Is Your Holi
A toast to the festival that lets you legally break rigid social patterns – allowing transgressions that’re a reversal of norms, and a nod to mocking the powerful
Holi has always been a rowdy, rule-bending festival that freely receives anticipatory bail on popular demand. One is supposed to accept transgressions on this special day and if everybody were to behave, then a sanctioned and well-established opportunity to be bad has gone waste. Nor is all this rambunctiousness recent, as those born late, or raised in a boarding school, might think.
A bristling defiance of formalised custom is Holi’s unique insignia. Even medieval records suggest that a great safety valve is released the night before Holi for accumulated grievances to whistle out in different directions. Village women broomed up to merrily whack their men and lower class folk hurled choicest abuses, often sweetened by brick and waste projectiles, at the privileged.
