MARCH 4, 2007-HOLI

We wake at dawn, covered in dew and cold, and have a quick breakfast. One of the boys comes around with a pie tin of bright green powder and draws a thumbprint of color across our heads—for us Holi has begun.

Our ride into town and the stables is uneventful—no boys chasing us with firecrackers to freak the horses out.

We get to the fort and sit in woven cane chairs in the courtyard, hearing a din of noise outside the walls. Since Bonnie is essentially the crown prince of the region, villagers begin to trickle in to pay their respects.

Salim and some more of the boys turn up with red and green powder and we all get smeared with fists full. Doc is a particular target and is covered in no time. Alexander, of course, is also a prime target. It gets funnier as more and more powder is smeared across cheeks, on bare arms and legs, and all over my evidently irresistible bald head. We all go and change out of riding gear into clothes we don’t mind getting ruined. I come back in shorts, t-shirt, and flip flops, my camera stashed away in a cargo pocket, hoping it won’t be ruined. We get in on the act, calmly at first.

The rest of the staff has turned up, loud and drunk and stumbling in one many-armed, many-legged, ragged-voiced, color-smearing mass. They stumble, sing, fall into each other. They pick on the two tiniest men, one old and one young, and pick them up on shoulders, hold them upside down and pour alcohol down their throats. They can barely stand and walking a straight line is well outside the realm of possibility. They each smear more color on us as a greeting, as we do them. By now there is purple and hot pink and some gold. One old guy gets out of hand and throws fistsfull directly into other people’s eyes. As village elders come to visit Bonnie, they bend down to touch his feet and are anointed calmly with powder.

Caroline, while dancing, had her knew buckle and go out from beneath her. When she gets home, she’ll discover she tore her ACL and has to have surgery and many weeks of rehab.

Several of us insist we are going out into the village. Bim gathers some of the guys and they escort us. Candy and Rebecca have donned turbans. One of the jeep drivers, Anil, a tall, mustached man, is in full pink drag with veil and fake breasts that he takes every occasion to rub up against us in a shimmying dance. Someone else produces a drum. We are a ragtag parade as we head out of the fortress walls.

Outside, it is primarily calm. It is not yet noon, but many people are already sleeping off terrific amounts of drinking. We drum and dance and chant our way up and down streets. People peer over walls and out windows, and our coterie grows. Louder chanting and clapping accompanies a good deal of horseplay, dunking each other in water troughs, trying to trip one another. They treat us like VIPs, getting us to dance and twirl with them, but never get too pushy. Rebecca, being petite and young, is lifted on someone’s shoulders. Patriarchs come out of some houses to greet us and shake our hands and smear us with their own colors…at least Barry and Curtis and I, I’m not sure they do so with the women. We dance and chant on, dogs and goats scurrying to get away…a cow is covered in colored powder and annoyed by our noise. There is enough laughter and yelling and joy to last for days. We pass an empty tour bus and later look up to the roof of a Haveli Museum and see the entire busload of tourists all feverishly taking our pictures. We eventually wend our way back to the fortress, and people drop off. We eat lunch in the courtyard covered in our colors. Eventually the drains of our bathrooms are challenged to wash away color after much effort and scrubbing. Lynn’s beautiful silvery hair has a swimming pool chlorine-like green glow, and Merilleon sports a certain shade of purple in hers. We notice color behind each other’s ears or backs of arms. I will blow my nose with vivid hues for days. The afternoon has the entire town asleep and I wander up a stairwell and walk along the narrow top of the fortress walls. There are two huge monkeys sitting on a balcony outside a window, enjoying the quiet and masturbating to their own reflections. A few kids walk by in the heat and look up to me, shading their eyes and waving.

Dinner is quiet—many of us napped or simply hung around, relaxing. It is Marianne’s birthday, and she wants to get into some sort of trouble. Most of us are exhausted since the day began earlier than most, but we agree we will go up to the roof of one of the fortress towers, bring a couple of bottles from the bar, and toast her in the bright moonlight.

It is a scene from a movie up here. We’re pinned by the brilliance of a just-past-full moon, the view of the town’s roofs like a backdrop in the blue-silver light. We’ve dragged out a couple of mattresses and blankets. Like Junior High School kids, someone gets the idea we should try to find someone to sell us some pot. We eventually dispatch Bim to the town to find “ganja” while we drink and laugh more and more. A few people get sassy, a few grow quiet, a few outrageous. It is our bonding and our getting ready to separate night rolled into one. Bim returns and we pass around sloppy joints filled with nothing more potent than tobacco, but feel naughty anyway, even if we were ripped off. A few women try to psychoanalyze Alexander—I dare say it is neither the first nor last such attempt on Relief Rides—he takes it well, pretends to be wounded a bit but isn’t. Lynn breaks out into a sad, haunting version of “God Bless the Child” that if you had asked me I would have said everyone would mock, but instead each of us grows quiet and introspective. Laughter comes back with much stumbling. It is a rounded staircase that wraps the outside of the tower that takes us up here, with no railing. After many of us, myself included, go off to bed, Marianne falls off the edge of the stairs and is caught, barely. She severely injures her knee and will be taken to the hospital the next morning, and Alexander, her catcher, wrenches his back. Her trip to hospital is one adventure I must say I don’t envy as we drop her off (attended by Bim) amid the throngs of people waiting, sitting, lying on the hospital steps. Since Bim is of some import in town, he gets her in ahead of much of the crowd, but it must be quite the experience anyway. Good times…more drama. Happy Holi.