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THIS ABOVE ALL
Holi of good old
days
Khushwant Singh
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Khushwant Singh
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There
was a
time when the festival I looked forward to enjoying the most was
Holi. There has come a time I dread the same festival and prefer
staying indoors till the festivities are over. The first phase
lasted all my years at school. The venue was the sprawling
mansion in Kashmiri Gate of Lala Raghubir Singh Jain, founding
father of Modern School. There were around 50 men, women, boys
and girls — Hindus, Sikhs and Christians — squirting
coloured water and gulaal powder on each other and
shouting Holi hai.
All this came
to an abrupt halt at noon. We showered, got into fresh clothes
and sat on the lawn in lines and served freshly-fried poories
and potato curry. It was all over by 1 pm and we slept soundly
till the evening.
As I grew older
and Holi became rougher, the mode and time of celebrating it
changed from morning to late evening. We stayed indoors till the
revellers called it a day. We drank a concoction of bhang
(hashish).
Nowadays Holi is celebrated in a rough manner |
Nihangs are
famous for imbibing bhang round the year. They call it sukha
parshad (peace-giving offering). You can see them outside
gurdwaras, crushing almonds and hashish in a mortar and pestle.
They mix the stuff with sugared milk and take it in large
quantities till they are drunk. They call themselves Guru ki
fauj (the Guru’s army) and claim to be tyar bar tyar
Khalsa (ever-ready to engage in battle).
What kind of
warriors they could be, loaded with bhang, is not difficult to
imagine.
Greatest leader
For all the
pomp and show;
Gandhi died in
India long ago;
And we would
never know;
His greatness,
till the aliens were to declare;
That he is of
all times the greatest leader;
Until Egypt
were to rise en masse;
And Tunisia a
threshold cross;
Peacefully to
usher in democracy;
We love him, by
him swear;
And day and
night sing his prayer;
But never our
assets truthfully declare;
True followers
of his philosophy;
We never
indulge in corruption, practice bribery;
Not only our
politicians live poorly;
Our traders
serve only their country;
Even an IAS
couple collects five hundred crore only;
So as long as
the sun rises, piercing the cloud;
We will do
Gandhi proud.
(Courtesy: Kuldip
Salil, Delhi)
Beggars
In British
days, India was known as a country of maharajas, snake
charmers and beggars. While the first two species are almost
extinct, beggars are surviving perhaps by adopting Darwin’s
theory of survival.
Thus recently,
in a Delhi’s posh colony, a beggar rang the bell of a house.
An elderly lady answered the bell and told the beggar to come to
collect alms later when her husband, too, will be at home. Thus
spake the beggar: "Madam ji. Please note my mobile
number and give me a call when your husband comes."
Mental status
An elderly
farmer from Himachal Pradesh was brought into the hospital
because he appeared confused and was thought to have had a
stroke. Attempting to assess his mental status, the emergency
doctor asked: "If you have a hundred sheep in a pasture and
seven escape, how many will be left?"
"Zero",
replied the farmer.
"No, the
answer is 93," said the doctor.
"Doctor
sahib," the farmer quipped, "you don’t know anything
about sheep. When one of them decides to go, they will all
go."
(Contributed by
Reeten Ganguly, Tezpur)
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