Happy Holi

Holi has following salient features:

1. Everybody looks quite the same, i.e., easily unrecognizable.

2. You can play with water, colors, mud etc. and others would be happy about it, unlike those toddler days.

3. You could deface/dirty anyone and that person won't really mind!

(bura naa maano, holi hai OR Don't mind, its Holi)

and many more...

For all my btech years, I happily avoided Holi celebrations in IIIT-H campus. But today when Ninja and Shashank came to take me for Holi celebrations, I couldn't really refuse. This would be my last year in college, my last holi as a college student so I decided to celebrate it for once. And it was fun. I now wonder how much fun it would have been if I had celebrated it with all my batchmates during the last four years. But, as they say, better late than never.

Shashank had asked me to prepare for the worst, i.e., wear an old t-shirt and that vest may not be worn. I changed into the t-shirt of the felicity my batch organized. And my dear juniors and friends tore my t-shirt, and then the vest I wore inside it. But it was fun getting one's t-shirt ripped and torn off. I felt more into the mood of Holi after that!

The mud party wasn't as bad as I had imagined. Nitin, Shashank, Abhinav and others put me in the puddle of mud water, then put mud and water on me, rolled me over the mud. With the mud party, I had officially celebrated my first Holi in IIIT-H!

I did avoid dipping into the tumbler of colorful dirty water, and used the hose pipe for direct water supply from a big water reservoir.

Just a passing thought: Holi and Halloween are similar in some ways... they sound similar, in Halloween people wear costumes and mask their face, in Holi people wear color on their clothes and mask their face with colors. Also, people are generally unrecognizable in both.

P.S. - Today before Holi celebrations, for the first time I solved some of many clues in crossword puzzle with Sashidhar.

The first time you meet someone

"One never gets a second chance to make the first impression."
Till a few years ago I used to believe that my first impressions are rarely good. I've stopped bothering about my first impression and the burden now entirely lies on the other person to think of my first impression as a pleasant one or a weird one.
To get over a one month long writer's block, today I decided to write about my friends, starting from the moment and the reason we met. That made me realize the importance of that first moment when you meet someone, especially when he/she becomes an integral part of your life, and in some ways changes/defines your life.
Perhaps its in human nature, a part of nature's law itself, that one remembers the start, some peak points and the end (if reached). And in all that, for me, the start or the first time is the most important.
A simple activity will show you the importance of the first time you meet someone. This is an experiment that may make you feel sad. If you've lost someone in your family/friends group or if you haven't met any of your family member/friend for a very long time and are not likely to meet him/her in near future, did you not, for once, think of the first time you had met that person. The feeling of nostalgia takes over and you recall the first time you met that person and the reason your lives met, the first laugh you shared, the first awkward moment you had, the first thing you did together or some other incident that cemented your relation at the level to where it was when you last met that person. This works for close acquaintances, and pets as well.
Its like walking on a road, alone or with that person, then halting and looking back at the first point on the road when you met that person.

Kabir Das ji once said, "Meet everyone with a smile on your face, you never know which one turns out to be God."
He was right. Just that the way I see it, God in this case would be the person who becomes an integral part of your life and changes it for good. Hence, "Meet everyone with a smile on your face, you never know which one turns out to become an integral part (or love) of your life."