Second Holi-playing chance today, am wondering whether to let it go or not. Second day of bhaang? Can't handle. Third two-hour scrubby bath in two days? Can't handle. Running around on crampy stomach and then stomaching biryani? Can't handle. But then it's homemade biryani after ages. Ma claims we're all secretly Mughal in nature. We like our saffron and we like our mutton and we like small paintings and in an earlier age I'd definitely be an annoying courtier-poet. More avenues open, more cattiness, I'd have had a ball.

My dad's been giving me guilt about dissing his idea to go watch Holi being played in the northeast; I only have his word for it but it's apparently very different and very picturesque and more than a little mindblowing. I had fourteen years of school where I played Holi nine times, that's five Holis gone where we could've been in the northeast. But this is a relatively new travelplan. We played in the para then, kids versus chengras, and it was like fighting a war. Here in the complex it's more Bollywoodish, with gulaal flung in the air and people jumping into the fountain at the end (na na, ota toh Fellini) and feeding each other laddoos. College tops all else in spite of the eggs. But I only have three years of college Holi, two down already, and given that this is one festival that gets me more hyper than Diwali I can't go away now. Even if it's to Arunachal.