The golden sun beam piercing the morning haze spreads a cosy warmth on the pristine earth.  The gentle northerly breeze wafts the fragrance of a thousand flowers as its countless hues carpet the ground till the horizons. The sweet chirping of the cuckoo birds strike a lingering melodious note of a bygone era. And the scented countryside is bustling with the harvest of many a bountiful crop spilling the granaries with lustrous grains. The days are getting longer and brighter and it’s that time of the year when nature decks up to unravel her beauty, most grandeur!  Rejoice, the celestial season of  Basant, the Spring, is here yet again, filling every heart with unfathomable joy and glorious bliss!

The season of Basant also enlivens the mystical and divine romance, enacted by the Lord, through colourful dance set to rapturous music. The Rasa Leela captures the myriad shades of  love that the Gopis nurtured towards their beloved and the pangs and agonies caused by their separation from him, that invariably follow.  They long to hold the Lord closest to their hearts but the playful One gives them a slip, everytime And Radha embodies the eternal quest for that nectarine sweetness of supreme love and the human predicament that prevents the final merger. Basant, in many ways, is also a celebration of unadulterated love, victorious of its many trials, victorious of, to borrow a phrase,  the “Ishaq Ka Imtihan”.

The natural adjunct to the season of colours is the festival of colours, the “Holi”.  With a riot of dazzling shades, deafening music and unrestrained revelry,  Holi is one occasion when man lets go his self-imposed importance and indulges in joyful inter-mingling without inhibitions. The colour on the faces is a great leveller that erases the distinction between the boss and the subordinate, between the ruler and the ruled, and, between the prosperous and the dispossessed.  And herein lay the egalitarian message of the festival and its loud affirmation on the essential and underlying unity of all creations that is beyond the multiplicity of the manifested world.

Oh, what a season, what an occasion, what a festival and what a message…. I am getting my “Pichkari” ready, what about you?

Yours

Narayanan