SPLASH OF COLOUR

The streets of Old Dhaka are hard enough to find your way around as it is without the added obstacle of pesky kids lurking in the periphery, bottles of colour in hand, ready to spray your garments into oblivion. But that's the beauty of Shakhari Bazaar on Holi. It's a vibrant show of expression, regardless of religion, creed or race and it's something that brings a lot of people from all walks of life together. The Hindu community is an intrinsic part of our country's cultural identity and every year their Holi festival, or Dol Jatra as it's known in Bangla, remains one of the most anticipated celebrations on the calendar. It's an excuse for people to take to the streets and splash colours on each other, colours that resemble all the shades of joy you can think of. The religious connotations are definitely significant to them and it's also a time of solemn prayers and offerings to their deities.

The event of Holi itself has evolved quite a bit through the years and this year, we were present to witness and partake in the mayhem on the streets. Navigating all the way to Shakhari Bazaar in Old Dhaka during a strike is definitely no easy feat. But the RS entourage of a photographer, his bubble-wrapped camera and myself, all dripping in oil to make the paint a tad bit manageable, somehow got to that secluded bit of Old Dhaka.

Upon arrival, we saw a large bamboo stick (something that wasn't present the day before, when we'd gone to see the Hindu devotees in prayer) had cordoned off the street. Manoeuvering past the ominous object, we proceeded into the alleyway and, because it was quite early in the morning, we thought the onslaught would start a bit later. Obviously, we were wrong. Two feet in and we're doused in the coldest of water. Not the most ideal of starts but soon enough my t-shirt was home to god knows how many colours, all of which congealed to give it a diseased look. My t-shirt was quite clearly dying. It was prudent then to put it out of its misery and jump in straight away. Paint was thrown, grimaces were made and squeals were heard. Someone had just puked out a rainbow. And it didn't look half bad either.

The festivities also included dancing to the tackiest of songs the speakers could throw at you, and everyone duly rose to the challenge. But one look upwards, away from all the chaos, showed the number of locals who were perched on their balconies, eyeing us beadily. For a moment, it felt intrusive and that somehow our presence had derived the locals of celebrating their own festival. That was until one very obnoxious kid from a balcony aimed straight for my eyes. Before I got a chance to even yell back at him, he did it again. I stowed away all retorts and walked away, only to bump into several plastic-wrapped cameras.

Admittedly, DSLRs are now as commonplace as a strike on a working day (keep going guys, we love you) but it was quite disconcerting to see the horde of cameras aimed at every nook and cranny of that small alley. An artist is always starved of inspiration. All art is expression and people have traversed the world over to get that rare glimpse of raw, unbridled expression of raw emotion, that moment when human beings are at their most beautiful and vulnerable, be it joy, hate or anger. Artists are suckers for that stuff, for that moment when feelings incandesce into something tangibly intangible. Photography definitely falls into this group and the people behind the plastic-wrapped hands had no doubt flocked to take that one shot which could shoot them to the heights of Facebook fame. But the fact remains that there were more photographers than celebrators and just as the novelty started to wear off I noticed that Shakhari Bazar resembled a local film set with its own share of bad posers. A lot of heads were scratched and confused looks exchanged between the locals as they were jostled and buffeted into posing for thousands of lenses. The unprecedented attention is definitely pleasing but sometimes you just want to douse your friend in paint without getting a multi-angle shot of it. In many cases, several people were giving instructions on how to pose and it did take the fun out of it all.

A friendly word of advice from our resident photographer would be to let things take their natural course and be as minimalist to the content as possible. He certainly did try to blend in that way, what with his face resembling a painted canvas and all. For someone who went there just for the experience, it was heaps of fun but the shenanigans by the Lensed Warriors did take a lot away from the day. At the end, though, it's important to remember that it's a day of religious importance to the Hindu community and while it's okay to participate it's not cool to make it inaccessible to everyone. Myself, I can't wait to take a walk down that alleyway again, where little kids hide out in the corners, looking for opportune moments to colour your life.