HOLI INSIGHTS

Holi '72 finally arrived. It was quite unlike Holi '71. I had attempted to run away from the latter but it nevertheless caught up with me in an unexpected way.

During ‘71 I was in a hostel that mainly housed engineering undergrads.  While there was nothing wrong with undergrads per se, even Engineering ones, they were not the same as us, the Grad students. We were like a handful of domestic cattle in the midst of a large herd of charging wild bison. They were rambunctious, energetic, robust, direct, not too subtle in their ways and were always in various states of high energy. We, on the other hand, were quiet, meek, even studious, world weary and in a state of perpetual stress.

Close to the Holi festival in 1971, the undergrads began planning the festivities. It was rumoured most of them would be staying back at the hostel on Holi day. Given that most of them disappeared into town for the smallest break, staying back could only be for very strong reasons. This atypical behaviour of lads who were strongly attracted to the big city lights troubled me. Never having celebrated Holi before, my expectations of it were based on hearsay which  indicated that it was one wild orgy of  colours, noise, intoxicants (especially bhang) and socially-approved groping of women. 

I heard whispers suggesting that the reason for the undergrads forsaking a holiday out on town was that dire plans were being hatched in which the chief entertainment was us Grad students.  Whispers further suggested that in addition to the traditional sprinkling of colours and water-fights, they intended to dunk us in a mud pool being dug for that purpose.  This would be preceded by heavy infusion of bhang, by force if necessary. For a person whose preferred stimulant until that time was tea, this was disturbing news indeed.

The dunking involved the victim being swung by his feet and arms and thrown into a mud pond. A safe dunking depended on the distance over which the victim was hurled and the exact point of his release by his tormentors. The undergrads’ grasp of the physics of oscillations was tenuous at the best of times.  Liberal consumption of bhang-infused milk would do nothing to improve their grasp of Physics, nor their aim. As a result the victim would more likely land on hard turf than in soft mud. The victims' howls of pain and humiliation were supposed to spice up the intoxicated revelries of the day. Given the absence of targets suitable for groping, this was perhaps the best - albeit a distant second -  entertainment they could think of.

  So it was good to get away from the Holi celebrations if one could. That was tricky considering I had no family in Bombay whose doors I could darken under the pretext of a religious observance. It was at this juncture I became aware of a rock climbing expedition of some sort organized by a Professor. I was not given to much trekking and was totally unfamiliar with rock climbing, but the chief attraction of this expedition to me was that it would take me well away from the campus, mud ponds, and excited undergrads baying for grads in the mud. 

So rock-climbing I went, early on the morning of Holi day in 1971 long before the undergrads had woken up. The trekking and climbing went off without a hitch save for Prof getting detached from his safety harness and being in danger of going over the cliff edge. Somehow we managed to get him back to safety – he was a good one, you see. Had it been Prof XYZ  in that situation, I am sure we would have been found wanting.

While returning to campus in the evening, we encountered a group of young boys from a village en route who were wielding not water pistols but tar and brush procured from a nearby road-repair gang. No one had apparently educated them on the rules of engagement on Holi day which was that post lunch, all colour and water throwing must cease. Untutored in the finer social conventions, they were still playing Holi at 5 pm and demanded that we join in, noting that we were "unmarked". They did offer to exempt us for a tenner each. This is what I love about Bombay - everything could be reduced to a business transaction and settled with money. A tenner was probably a small price to pay to escape the dire alternative.

When Holi 72 came along, we grad students had our own separate hostel, and did not have any undergrads hatching diabolical schemes in our midst. The celebrations would be voluntary and with everyone's wholehearted participation. Those that could not participate physically were, however, persuaded to contribute monetarily – we had absorbed the Bombay spirit after all. The planning began a month in advance.The organizers were not from the North, but appeared to have intimate knowledge of Holi celebrations in general and about bhang in particular. They received expert advice from my friends from Geology who were a cornucopia of information relating to Holi and Bhang. There was one ingredient we had to do without - women, a commodity in short supply on campus.

Contributions were collected,  colours and  bhang procured (and beer too - the organizers skimmed a bit off the collections for a private party where beer would be served), and ground rules framed and disseminated. Some of the mess employees were co-opted for the preparations of the bhang for a liberal share of the intoxicants plus some cash gratuity.

The H-day dawned peacefully and quietly in our hostel in contrast to the feverish, high energy and high-decibel activity that was evident in nearby undergrad Hostels. We awoke,  breakfasted, read the day's papers and then by common consent declared the festivities open. There was some perfunctory splashing of colours and water as a prelude to the main event which was the consumption of bhang. Everyone had seconds and may be thirds too. Possibly not N, who was - and remains - a sober sort of a chap. “Brain” was home in Bandra. When H had his Nth helping there was only a thick sludge of ground bhang left over. He was grateful for what he could get and helped himself rather liberally.

Lunch time approached and we showered, ate lunch, and were soon overcome by sleep by about 2 pm or so. A loud discussion outside my door, more lively in my opinion than was warranted,  woke me up from my siesta. Upon investigation I found H and R having a very highly animated discussion on the relative complexities of BCS Theory and A-B Effect. I don't quite recall exactly what R was on about, but it was something about two gents named A and B and an eponymous effect in which electromagnetic fields were doing things they were not supposed to do. H was animatedly explaining how he was actually seeing some scalars, vectors and matrices jiggling about inside a crystal, making some theory or the other crystal clear. 

H was a very placid sort of a chap and totally unflappable in any situation, a veritable iceberg in temperament and size. I had never seen H so excited about anything, not even when his brother bought him a Grundig 8 track spool-type tape recorder with spools full of Jethro Tull. The bhang had clarified to him things in a way the faculty had failed to. Life is like that; simplest and the most unlikeliest of things and situations have the most profound consequences. It was H's Eureka moment. We had to contain his enthusiasm lest he do an Archimedean dash round the block or, worse, round the campus.

Art this point I spied a delegation of Physics girls bearing down on our hostel and it was clear they were intending to call on us to extend Holi greetings. I remember going down to the lounge area to receive the ladies and stall them from proceeding up to "our" wing, leaving R and the rest of the gang to try and “sanitize” our respective rooms and to bring H down to ground state. One was flying so high that he was reporting altitude sickness and had to taken to the campus hospital. The visit was managed with reputations fairly intact.

H and R went on to work on BCS theory and AB effect respectively for their dissertations. At that time I hated it that whereas my encounter with bhang had left me groggy and grumpy for a week,  it had made it easier for them to comprehend their world. H went on to pursue this line of inquiry for the rest of his life which was cruelly cut short by illness. His work may yet usher in room-temperature super conductors. R moved on to other pastures. 

As for me, bhang could not compensate for my lack of critical insights in Physics and therefore I dropped them both soon after the above events.