BENGALURU: A celebration of the arrival of spring, love and victory of good over evil, the festival of Holi is defined by exuberant water play and a riot of colours. Every year those celebrating Holi in Bengaluru take to the streets armed with powdered colours, ‘gulal’, and water-filled balloons and guns.
Social boundaries dissolve as friends, families, and even strangers playfully drench each other in a kaleidoscope of hues. Yet this year, the spirit of the festival has taken on a subdued hue, owing to the severe water crisis faced by some parts of Bengaluru.
“In previous years, we would have celebrations throughout the day, where people would play Holi beginning in the morning and until the evening. This year, we have decided to restrict the celebrations to just two hours in the evening.
Furthermore, it’s going to be completely dry celebrations and with strictly organic colours,” says Priyanka Roy-Sinha, who has been organising Holi celebrations at a gated community in HSR Layout. “Holi is a community-driven festival and in keeping with that spirit, we have decided to focus on other activities
that the community could engage in. Primarily, we are encouraging residents to make special Holi sweets, which will be distributed among the residents and also to a few orphanages,” she adds.
Similarly, residents of a gated community in JP Nagar have also gone with a ‘water-free’ celebration where pickharis and artificial colours are banned. “While we are facing some disruptions with our water supply, we have been fortunate to have not experienced the kind of scarcity that some other areas in the city have been experiencing. Hence, keeping that in mind, we are going with a strictly organic-colours-only celebration. These colours are much easier to wash off and don’t require the same amount of water that artificial colours do,” shares Pranav Shastry, a member of the community.
Meanwhile, Ananyabrata Bhakta, President BinB (Bengalis in Bengaluru), says the community has decided to forego celebrations altogether this year, in order to conserve water. “It’s important to enjoy festivals but not at the cost of our precious resources. Each year, we have anywhere between 100-150 people who participate in our Holi celebrations. And each of them would need a huge amount of water to clean up after playing Holi.
Hence, in view of the current water crisis, it wouldn’t be feasible to Celebrate and essentially waste all that water,” he adds. As the water crisis unfolded in the weeks leading up to Holi, several travel experience companies and entrepreneurs took the initiative to offer unique destinations, far removed from the urban sprawl.
These places allowed people to celebrate the festival without guilt or worry about water wastage. Many of these Holi parties even featured water as their main attraction. Ankit Bharadwaj, co-founder of Banjara and Gypsy, a travel experience company in the city, says, “We are organising two Holi parties in a couple of places, one is in the Urban Valley on Kanakapura Road for people from the Electronic City area to enjoy an outdoor Holi along with rain dance.
The other one is in Indiranagar. At the Kanakpura Road one, since it’s on the outskirts, there isn’t much issue with water so we are doing a rain dance but in the Indiranagar one, we won’t be doing any rain dances. Maybe only a few drums with water but that also depends on availability.”