Holi in Thailand

Shirish Joshi on Songkran, a three-day water festival that marks the Thai New Year

A crowd of high-spirited revellers carrying buckets of water and coloured water pumps gather at a street corner. Suddenly, screams and laughter erupt from the group as they are accosted by another bunch of youngsters who shower them with buckets of cold water and smear their faces with handfuls of powder. A ‘water war’ breaks out between the two groups, which ends in a lot of fun for everyone.

This familiar Holi scene is not taking place in Chandigarh or Mathura or Delhi or, for that matter, anywhere in India. It is taking place in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand.

India isn’t the only country where passers by take a dousing of coloured water in their stride once a year. Thais celebrate their own ‘water festival’ during Songkran, the traditional three-day Thai New Year, which starts on April 12/13. The word Songkran, incidentally, is derived from the Sanskrit root of sankranti.

Thais observe the festival by bathing Buddha images in wats (temples), and offering food and water to monks. Young people pour scented water into the hands of elders as a mark of respect, and seek their blessings.

Songkran is also the time for beauty parades, dancing and plenty of high-spirted water throwing. Thais use plain (not coloured) water, scented with jasmines, in much the same way as tesu (flame of the forest) flowers were earlier used in some parts of India to perfume and colour the water used for playing Holi. And instead of using the multi-hued abir and gulal, Thais smear each other with some white power.

Songkran gives young Thais an opportunity to interact with each other. Young men and women look forward to having some socially accepted fun with the opposite sex. As in India, so in Thailand, everything is fair on this day.

Not even tourists can escape from water being thrown at them. Children and young people run about with buckets of cold water and anyone venturing out into the streets is sure to get a drenching. But as this is the hottest period of the year, the deluge can actually be quite refreshing.

It is believed that anyone who rejects the kindness of another throwing water on him will have bad luck in the coming year, so most people happily submit to the soaking. Those who do not want to get wet may have to bribe their way out.

The celebrations are the liveliest at Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city. The water throwing continues for three days, and the festivities culminate with the crowning of the "Queen of the Water Festival".

The Dai tribes in southern China also have a "water splashing festival". The festival, which begins with the washing of Buddha images, spans three to five days. On the second day, the Dais splash friends and relatives with clean, scented water. Splashing water is a way of invoking blessing, so the more a person gets splashed, the luckier it is believed he will be.