Holi - Lets Make it a Start of a Colourful Year

Hi everyone,

Its been quite sometime since my last post here. Well, firstly, let me wish everyone a Happy Holi - 2006.

Yesterday was Holi - the festival of colours - the onset of spring and the onset of celebrations. I started thinking on a particular issue - what is colour and what does it signify.

Well any layman can define colour - colour is the different shade of what we see around us - and it signifies the position in the spectrum. A scientist will argue that colour is the intensity of light in a particular spectrum and so on....

Well to my mind the definition of colour is two -fold. A logical explaination of colour is that it is the ability to distinguish any object by way of its appearance - not physical dimensions, but intensity of light that is thrown back at us. Its significance in our lives is immense - imagine what it would be without it - an old chaplin black and white movie - all greys, blacks and whites!!!

Another dimension to colour is the ability to express feelings - I think a colour expresses feelings - the mood the person is in - there are various lessons / articles / research on this - go google!!

Going back to Holi - a celebration of colours - if we are celebrating with colours and are colouring each person in bright happy colours - to my mind we are celebrating the essence of life - the ability to feel and we are joyous for this gift. Lets not get more sentimental here. But an even bigger celebration is the inability to distinguish. As a result of Holi - each person looks alike - all messy with a lot of colours - white teeth and black eyes staring at you - otherwise its all the same. Each and every person is happy and merry and forget all religion, caste, colour, status, income levels ----- the list goes on. This is the inability to distinguish - and I think this inability should last for year long and not just on Holi.

Well I am not suggesting that we start playing with colours each day and get to office all drunk (on bhang) - all I am saying is, lets strive to leave this distinguishing ability aside - so that it does not come under our good judgjement and we are able to make decisions and take actions based on pure logic and rationale rather than other issues. Logic and rationale - the pillarstones for mankind's greatness - lets take that as a first step - I am sure this will help all of us greet the world as one.

Cheers (hik!!)

Piyush