When The Skies Play Holi

Our Holi (known in Bengal more popularly as Dolyatra) is mostly restricted to the Dol Purnima of the Bengali solar month Chaitra. (and sometimes when election and academic results are announced) It is this time that there is a pleasant atmosphere all around our country, as a result of being the prime time of the Spring season, or Vasanta. However, one the most unique feature of our blue planet, and which awes me much more than Holi is the vast endless skies stretching far away endlessly to outer space. The sky is something of which we can never reach the end while one can travel around the world. It is enormous, greater than our imagination but sadly it is taken for granted by humans, and part of everyday life no matter where we go. If I started outlining how the skies literally play Holi with the Sun's and the clouds' help, I could go on and write a whole book on it, which lack of time prevents me from doing. This festival of colours is carried out almost all throughout the year during sunsets and sunrise, with a subdued gap in the rainy season when thunder and lightning is like fireworks on Diwali. Holi in the skies is different for different seasons and for different places. This is also something to mention when it comes to skies—it is the same everywhere and every time but different. Each second that goes by changes the sky scene. Sometimes this is so negligible that most do not even notice. 

For instance, on a sleepy morning in the winter season in a small village some way away from the metropolis of Kolkata, the fields are veiled with a thin layer of mist, the rising sun's rays peeking out through the mist and like a paintbrush it paints and mixes tge dark green colour of the fields and the bushes, the misty white and turns it into a magnificent hue that cannot be described using words. The young village man going to collect the latex of the date palm tree to make jaggery has no way of knowing where the sky is and where the fields are—they appear as one unit painted by the omnipotent yet translucently visible Sun. Similar to how some people appear on Holi, no way to recognize their faces smeared with a variety of different colours that mix together and give a horrifying tint to the skin. 

A bright sunny cloudless winter day in the hills has no great variety of colour except the characteristic Sky Blue. Blue skies may not be as exciting as sunrise or sunset, but they still look absolutely great—a panorama stretching for miles and miles filled with trees on the lower slopes and endless snow on the higher peaks and little rivers and streams meandering about, the mountains high and mighty with their rugged slopes and adventurous terrain. It is absolutely incomplete without blue skies.

A montane sunset on the other hand, in any season whatsoever except monsoon is another good example of Holi. The entire landscape changes as the sun disappears down the uneven horizon of the hills. The colour changes from pale blue to first a yellowish colour which gets reflected by the snow, with the lower vales shifting to darkness gradually. Then the play goes on—yellow turns to orangish then vermillion and scarlet. The clouds in the sky turn and twist about in unique shapes, getting coloured too. The otherwise-lush green of the vegetation too changes colour. It seems as if all the atmosphere, the lithosphere and biosphere and all its elements take part in this magnificent spectacle. After vermillion, the colour fades again and turns pink, then grey and a simultaneous disappearance of the magic—the clouds become more or less invisible and the sky assuming a dark blue or purplish tint. Then even what is left of the light disappears and everything is enveloped in a veil of darkness, the western part of the sky still lighter than the rest however for some more time. 

That just about sums up three scenes or spectacles of Holi played by the elements of nature—the infinite sky, the seasons, the omnipotent sun and the environment. How I wish I had the time to document every moment of this Holi!