A Special Holi!!

It was a working day for me this Holi. Holi fell on a Wednesday and since it was exactly in the mid of a working week, it was pretty darn colorless. This was the first time in my life that I was not playing with colors on Holi. Considering the fact that I had played Holi even while I was in US, that too with just a handful of friends/colleagues, it was pretty disappointing not being to play it this time around. This being my first Holi after marriage, I wanted to celebrate it with M and have an extra special and memorable day. Anyways with M being in Baroda, the prospects didn’t look that great anyways. So as things turned out, I didn’t even get to see Gulaal, let alone play with it. :-( To feel a little better and not miss out on the fun part, I told my friends that let’s have it on the coming Sunday. How does it matter that it’s not Holi.. we all can get together, cook some delicacies, play with colors and have fun.

Ok so after deferring Holi celebrations to Sunday, everything continued as usual. On Saturday, I got ready early. That’s only because I am doing a Puja called “Gangaur” :-) (All married girls in our community have to do it in the first year of their marriage. It starts from the day Holika is burnt and continues for some 16-18 days. As it turns out I find this puja very interesting.. definitely worth a separate post). So I woke my roomie (Can’t do the puja alone. It’s supposed to be done with an unmarried girl :D) and both of us were doing the Gangaur Puja. I completed the Puja and came out of the Puja room. As soon as I was out, I hear M’s voice shouting “Surprise!!” And I see him standing there, with his face smeared in Gulaal and more Gulaal in his hands. I was so happy (and surprised too), I actually went speechless. I couldn’t form a single coherent word; I was just silently looking at him for a long time. Only when he put color on my face and hugged me, did I actually speak out. And the entire time M was laughing like anything – gloating over the fact that his plan to surprise me was successfully executed without a single hitch. :-D It seems everyone in our family and my roomie knew about this, while I was caught unaware. Great plan dear!!

Since we wanted to avoid our apartment getting colorful.. :-), all of us moved to the terrace (we have an amazing big private terrace on our floor). We played holi for sometime.. Since I don’t actually understand dry Holi.. I went to the bathroom and got a bucketful of water, mixed some color into it (had to make do with Gulaal) and poured it on top of M. A round of Holi with colored water followed which was in turn followed by a round of photo session. After this, we took bath and got ready. (Thanks to M and his surprise, I had to take bath again.) By this time, everyone had built up a solid hungry stomach. I made Tea and Paranthas. And all of us had Tea and Parantha with Pickle. Some mixtures and mathari’s were also thrown in. So we ended up having a very late and very heavy breakfast – ideal for a lazy Saturday, don’t u think? :D The lunch prepared by our Cook is something that we had only at 5 in the evening; we ate it not coz we were hungry but coz we should eat it.. :-) With lunch done, we went out for an evening walk. Target - to make our bellies a little lighter; Result - Ended up having Pani Puri’s and Fruit Juice in our favorite snacks joint. :-)

Came back home. My cellphone has not been in working condition since last month or so and I wanted to buy a new cell and hence made M take me for shopping (Bought a Nokia Expressmusic series phone – I like it.. as of now). M and I drove around Bangalore for some time. After the amount of food that we had since morning, no one was looking forward to Dinner. But again we had to eat coz we had to eat. :-) Greedy us!! This time around M offered to make noodle sandwich. We all were ok.. go ahead.. but the name “noodle sandwich” itself made me more than a little apprehensive. As it turned out, it was our fav good old maggi (dry prepartion) stuffed between two slices of bread and tawa-toasted with big dollops of butter. It was yummmmmy.. :-) We had bought a 1.5 litre Thums Up bottle (a favorite of M) in the evening which went really well with the sandwich. With everyone eating 2 sandwiches each, the plan to keep dinner light backfired.

Anyways soon the dinner was over and chit-chat session followed. We retired into our rooms after sometime as we needed to get up early the next day. Mom was coming to Bangalore to help me with the Gangaur Puja :-) and I & M had planned to go to the station to pick her up. So next day when mom arrived, it was a great get together involving lot of food, laughter and fun. It can be a new post altogether – especially the laughter all of us shared watching the videos that my Mom got. During Christmas, I and M had gone to Brajrajnagar (my first trip home after marriage). We made some gr8 memories during that period. Most of it was captured by my sis in the handycam and Mom had bought the handy cam with her to Bangalore. Watching my family members (and that means everyone including my grandma) dancing on 25^th night, watching my sis getting terrified of drowning while boating on IB river, watching M wincing while giving blood for blood test – pure unadulterated fun. Watching the videos was the highlight of Sunday for sure.

All in all a great weekend!! My first Holi with M turned out to be even more memorable and special for me than my expectations. Thank you Honey!! I will always remember how special you made me feel this Holi.