Saibal Chatterjee

Ever since the black and white era drew to a close, Hindi films have been a steady riot of hues: gaudy, wild, splashy and all encompassing. So it is only natural that Holi, the spring festival of colours, occupies a unique niche in Mumbai cinema's visual and musical scheme of things.

While the boisterous festival is rarely presented as a pivotal element in the narrative construct of a Mumbai potboiler, the revelries popularly associated with the occasion are frequently employed as a plot device to highlight emotions and psychological nuances. As with so much else in popular Hindi cinema, the ploy does not always click, often degenerating into an obvious contrivance. But when it does work, the formula-ridden Holi number can contribute meaningfully to the overall appeal of a film.

The Holi song, the most common on-screen manifestation of the festival, has, of course, evolved dramatically over the years, not always for the better. Time was when filmgoers were treated to sedate renditions like Holi aayee re kanhai (Mother India, 1957) and Tan rang lo ji aaj man rang lo (Kohinoor, 1960) - numbers that were in synch with a gentle era. Today, the routine has assumed infinitely more suggestive and vibrant form. Witness Meri pahle hi tang thi choli, performed with gusto by Tina Munim and Rajesh Khanna in Souten (1983), as a case in point. The celebratory Holi number in Hindi films has come a long way indeed since A.R. Kardar directed Holi (1940) with Motilal, Khursheed and Sitara Devi and brought the festival into the cinematic mainstream.

In recent years, however, Holi has moved just a bit out of the picture. In post-MTV India, it has become all but redundant because the art of genteel seduction has turned into unbridled, unabashed physicality. In contemporary Mumbai cinema, the elemental act of getting the message across comes pretty easy to the characters; they do not need the crutches of a pre-Vedic festival to let their hair down and assert their sexuality.

While in numerous Hindi films down the decades, the celebration of Holi may have indeed appeared to be a mere pretext to insert a song and dance routine that grants the dashing hero and the winsome heroine the license to indulge in some aggressive public courtship, the exuberantly shot numbers have sometimes gone beyond their superficial appeal to add value to the script.

As the enormously popular Rang barse number, sung by superstar Amitabh Bachchan for Yash Chopra's Silsila (1981), famously did. The situation is ostensibly conventional, but its treatment is not. The air is thick with gulal, and verbal banter - it often carries subliminally sexual undertones. The film's hero (Amitabh Bachchan) serenades the woman he once loved and lost (Rekha in a role that had tantalising real-life echoes), much to the consternation of their respective spouses (Jaya Bachchan and Sanjeev Kumar). In Chopra's seasoned hands, the routine Holi song - this one is especially unusual because it is penned by Harivansh Rai Bachchan, and not a regular Hindi film lyricist - assumes an infectiously folksy appeal, besides providing a crucial twist to the film's love triangle.

Chopra puts a completely different spin on the Holi number in Darr (1993). Shah Rukh Khan is Rahul, an obsessed lover who relentlessly stalks the film's heroine Kiran (Juhi Chawla). Her marriage with a handsome young naval officer Sunil (Sunny Deol) is round the corner, and so the Holi festivities take on a special significance for the lovely lady. While the ravishing Kiran, attired in a white salwar suit, swivels and swings to the seductive rhythm of Saajan hamen aise rang lagana, ang se ang lagana, the pychotic Rahul mingles with the revellers to get close to the woman he is desperate to possess.

Sunil plays the dholak, unmindful of the identity of the man dancing so freely with his would-be wife. When he realizes what's on, he tries to nab Rahul, but the latter melts into the crowd. The moment of joy that Holi represents for the couple is thus soured by the threat of impending danger.

One of the high points of Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Namak Haram (1973), was a fun-filled Holi song. In this classic tale of a male bonding that survives the class divide and death, the Holi festivities in a drab workers' colony are as much an occasion for fun and frolic as they are an expression of a growing sense of helplessness. Rajesh Khanna, an outsider who develops deep sympathy for the workers' cause and internalizes their woes, croons: Nadiya se dariya/ Dariya se saagar/ Saagar se gehra jaam/Jaam mein doob gayi yaaron/Mere jeevan ki har sham (I drown every evening of my life in glasses of wine that are deeper than an ocean).

This is no ordinary Holi song for it doesn't speak of the festival at all. Instead, it sums up the deep-seated frustration of a workforce that is constantly denied its dues. Amid the practical pranks that the inebriated hero - intoxicants are an integral part of Holi - plays on a female union activist (Rekha) in connivance with her brother (Asrani), Mukherjee skillfully and unobtrusively builds up a mood of foreboding that is difficult to miss even amid all the song and dance that are so much a part of the celebration of the festival of colours.

In Sholay (1975), Ramesh Sippy achieved a somewhat similar effect but in a completely different way. The evil Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan) asks his men: Holi kab hai, kab hai Holi? Cut to rustic Ramgarh, where the virile Veeru (Dharmendra) and the loquacious Basanti (Hema Malini) join the villagers in celebrating Holi. Holi ke din dil mil jaate hain, rangon mein rang mil jaate hai, they sing even as the threat of an attack by Gabbar Singh looms over the hamlet. Sure enough, the joyous song is rudely interrupted by gunshots and the clatter of hooves. A shootout erupts. Terror and bloodshed quickly replace the colours of joy. The use of the metaphor of Holi as a portent of grave danger has never been quite as effective as it is in Sholay.

Popular Hindi cinema's focus, for obvious reasons, has been almost exclusively on the festive aspect of Holi, which links the occasion to Lord Krishna's legendary love for Radha. It took a non-mainstream Mumbai film Holi (1984), Ketan Mehta's stunning directorial debut, to play up another crucial facet of the celebration: fire. Holi is a celebration of love and vitality; equally, it is about the destruction by fire of all that is evil.

Mehta's cult film, based on a play by Marathi playwright Mahesh Elkunchwar, was titled Festival of Fire in English and not without reason. The action is set on a college campus that is rocked by violent disturbances when the chairman of the college's governing board decides to deliver a lecture on the day of the festival. The protesting students make a bonfire of the college furniture and their own textbooks, reflecting a real-life ritual that commemorates Vishnu devotee Prahlad's fiery annihilation of his demon aunt Holika: it involves the burning of dry branches, twigs and leaves heaped together in the form of a pyramid.

To return to the Holi plot, one thing leads to another and a student who snitches on his mates is forced to commit suicide. In the film's climactic moments, the rebellious students are driven away in a police van. Revellers outside continue with their merry-making - one catches a glimpse of director Mehta in the crowd - while the students stare blankly at them. Instead of cleansing the system, the festival of Holi here leaves a scar on the campus and the minds of the students.

Perhaps the only time this rather bleak vision of Holi surfaced in popular Hindi cinema was in Zakhmi (1975), a typical vendetta drama in which leading man Sunil Dutt chooses the festival to proclaim his resolve to settle scores with his villainous tormentors. In a marked variation, he croons an angry Holi number, Zakhmi dilon ka badla chukane aaye hain diwane…dil mein Holi jal rahi hai. This, of course, was an exception.

In most other Hindi films of the period, the Holi musical interlude revolves exclusively around the game of seduction. In Kati Patang (1975), the Holi song, Aaj na chhodenge bas humjoli/Khelenge hum Holi, culminates in the hero Rajesh Khanna accidentally applying gulal on the parting of the heroine Asha Parekh's hair, an act that, in accordance with Hindu customs, signifies a man's acceptance of a woman as his wedded wife. In Kaamchor (1982), it is the leading lady Jaya Prada who, rather unusually, makes the first move, singing Mal de gulal mohe aayi Holi aayi re (Pour gulal on me, Holi is here), and the hero (Rakesh Roshan) gleefully fulfils her wish.

In Dhanwan (1981), poet-lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi summed up the humanist philosophy of Holi as only he could. He took the spirit of the festival beyond just a man's love for a woman, and extended it to embrace love for all mankind. Maro bhar bhar kar pichkari, Maine apne man ke mayel ko dhoya, Tum bhi kroadh ko dho lo, Holi ka yehi matlab hain (Let the colours of Holi, Wash away the anger in your heart, I've cleansed my soul of dirt, That is the essence of Holi)

This appeal for amity, strangely, finds an echo in the Holi number from that perennial favourite, Sholay: Gileh shikwe bhulke, doston Dushman bhi gale mil jaate hain Holi ke din… (Friends, even enemies bury their differences And embrace each other On the day of Holi)

Ironically, the fate that befalls the Ramgarh villagers belies the touching optimism that the song articulates. For the heartless Gabbar Singh, songs of peace can only be a mere string of words, of empty ideas. As in the make-believe world of Hindi cinema, so in the real world: the annual celebration of Holi is supposedly a means to rid society of all hatred and sorrow. But does it ever succeed in achieving its aim? It is perhaps owing to the fact that Holi is a symbol merely of hope, and not of reality that it so colours the vision of Bollywood's dream merchants.

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