Let the Festivities Seep in

 

Don't shy away from festivals. Music festivals, color festivals, light festivals, and various other religious and cultural festivals are the highway inns along the great path that life is. These are the pools for everyone to dive in: a big collective exercise to share the same emotion. Festivals provide an opportunity when your oppressed self can go for a revolution against the stress and frustrations of life. Real celebration of a festival may be the stepping stone to enjoy life itself as a festival.

Take Holi, for example. Basically a celebration of colors. Nothing symbolizes colors more than love. So if you want to move beyond the celebrations literally, take one more step towards celebrating it in spirit. Sprinkle the colors on your spirit. Waddle in the colors of love, care, kindness, sympathy, empathy, compassion, forgiveness and understanding. A human soul needs these colors as much as our skins pine for gulal on Holi. Involve your soul in celebrations also. Drive out the black color of hate and douse yourself with the vibrant colors of humanity and tolerance.

It may take some effort to better your worldly conditions, your profession, your job and your business. But it is really simple and easy to turn for the better as a human being. It doesn’t carry any extra cost. It comes free. It doesn’t even need time and drill of humungous effort. Just aim the pichkari at your soul. Let out a spurt of colors. Only this much. Job is done. It will drive out the shades of dark and gray.

Smile more. Smile over someone’s luck even if you are still waiting for your own. It will arrive shortly, changing your little smile to a huge laughter. Forgive your enemies. Look at them with a smile. They will be shamefaced of their dark thoughts about you. Feel happy just to be alive and healthy. The problems of life will seem just routine investments of effort only as much as you invest in climbing a flight of stairs.

Religious hatred has killed more people than the number of souls who have received real peace from religion. Religious divides keep on killing humans like in medieval times. So where is the advancement? The only way left out for humanity is inter-religious harmony. Festivals are the bridges. Abandon your hate and allow the colors to reach the other side as well. Put the festivals out of the barricade. Let the fun and joy be for everybody.

During Mughal period, Muslim emperors and courtiers sprinkled abeer and gulal from ornate balconies. It fell on the people of all faiths. Colored waters of tesu flowers sprinkled the spring-time festivity on the mundane clothes of a common humanity. It was Holi as well as Gulabi Eid. Festivities merged. Looking at the present iron-curtain divides, I wonder, “Have we regressed in our spirits with the passage of time?”

 Wishing everybody a very happy Holi! When you take a bath after the celebrations, please ensure you retain the colors of a better human being on your spirit. 

Same is for Diwali. Let the light starting from the tiny lamps reach into your inner being. Let your soul be a brightly lit grand hall of love, harmony, balance, equipoise, kindness and smiles.

And let it be so for all other festivals of all religions, castes and creeds. These are nothing but celebrations of the biggest truth about human beings, loving self. They just send a gentle reminder.