When I was young, Holi or rather ‘Dol’ as we Bengalis call it was a day I used to wait for eagerly. Every year till I was about 14-15, the day used to start with us ‘para’ (neighborhood) friends gathering in front of my house, laying down all our colors, balloons and ‘pichkaris’ etc in one place, getting buckets of water out and then starting to play like crazy . We were good kids. We never used to throw balloons or color at unknown people and it was mostly just us. We used to start at about 9 in the morning and continue till about 12. Then return home with black faces and color all over and I remember having used Rin soap to get rid of the color a couple of years because it was so bad. Morning time was reserved for the liquid colors and evening for ‘abir’ or gulaal. It was the same batch of people and we used to smear abir on each other and then as a treat, have chicken roll and cold drinks and come back home so happy.