Sandstorm In A Teacup

Now I’m not a religious man, but if I ever were, I’d be a Hindu. It just seems so much fun, with hundreds of colourful Gods, festivals galore, and great stories to boot. It makes Christianity look so dull. Mind you, and I do apologise to all Christians out there, it's hardly a barrel full of laughs these days, is it?

And isn’t it incredibly unfair that your religion (if you have one) is forced on you by either your location or your origins? The whole shebang would be much more attractive if choosing a religion were like choosing your football team, or your bank.

Just imagine if the British government passed an anti-competition law against the Anglican church, and opened up a free market to all religions. You could go to a sort of open day and meet your religious leaders who could all try to convince you their religion is best. The Anglicans would be all limp-wristed, offering you milky tea and a chat about the bible, while the Pagans would come out of the woodwork offering mini-breaks in the forest. However, it would be the Hindus who would attract the crowds.

Let’s take Holi as an example. We landed just before the celebration of Holi, which coincided this year with the rather more sobre Easter Sunday in the UK. So while Brits were chomping on chocolate eggs, Indians were throwing coloured powder at each other and getting high on bhang (cannabis!).

Holi is a Hindu festival celebrating the burning of Holika (pictured) in a story so complicated that I can only recommend you search for it on Wikipedia and read it several times over so that you can understand who killed who and why. Anyway, it turns out that Krishna, who was something of a ladies man, celebrated Holi by putting coloured powder on his main love, Radha, so that she would be the same colour as him. Today, the festival celebrates the coming of spring, and the powders are actually supposed to be Ayurvedic concoctions designed to help people overcome seasonal colds that they would usually get what with the change in temperature.

So, on my first foray into New Delhi, I was greeted with the sight of grown men walking around, covered in red, green and blue powder. Even one stray dog had apparently joined in the fun, and several men were dozing away on the pavement after having partaken in too much bhang. The newspaper was full of warnings, asking people to refrain from attacking women with water guns and powder, and above all, not to “eve tease” – an offence that landed Richard Gere in hot water when he tried to snog that National Treasure, Shilpa Shetty.

On the day of Holi itself, kids and adults alike were attacking each other with water and powder. Now, imagine this were to happen in the mollycoddled UK. Health and Safety officials would be bricking themselves, working themselves up into a sweat over the potential consequences of throwing powder at someone. “What if they’ve got a respiratory disease?” “What if someone were to fall over?” “What if someone were allergic to red powder?” Bunch of time-wasting spoilsports. Thank God (or Holika) that there’s no such organisation in India!