Colours of Holi

Veeresh Malik
15 March 2014, 12:37 PM IST

 

Driving back towards Delhi from North-Eastern Rohilkhand a few years agi, a friend and I were aiming at driving through the night, as we wanted to get back in time for Holi the next morning. The roads here are supposed to not be very friendly to nocturnal travellers, and very often it is not easy to make out if the checkpost up ahead is from the law-enforcers or law-breakers, so it makes sense to travel light - and fast. Even stopping for food can lead to problems of the sort where your food or your car can be tampered with or a specific road-block set up to intercept you ahead.

It is safest, if you do these roads, to stop for a breather in and around the many Armed Forces establishments en-route - most of them will have reasonably decent facilities and eating options at the quiet little roads that turn off in their direction. We had pulled over for a pee and tea stop outside one such little known Indian Air Force facility just before sunset, and were soaking in the sheer beauty of miles upon miles of floriculture in this sub-Himalayan area, when the thought occured to us almost together - let's take some flowers home?

We were travelling light, all that we were carrying with us was on the rear seat, and so we set off towards one of the nearer farms. Spotting the mandatory Bahadur sitting in majestic glory on his charpoy outside under a tree, I asked him if he would sell us some flowers? Bahadud said, "you have to go and ask my Sahib, why don't you go ahead to the house and do so?"

At the modest working farm-house and homestead a bit further in, we met the equally mandatory retired Indian Armed Forces stalwart, who greeted us, and once we had established our ex-Merchant Navy and offspring of Armed Forces credentials, insisted we have a cup of tea with him, too.

Both of us really don't know much about flowers, so when he asked us what we wanted, we said we would like the trunk of the car filled up with flowers of all sorts please. Bahadur was summoned, instructions given, some calculations done on a piece of paper, and we were asked for about 600/- rupees. That was for a Chevrolet Optra's boot full of flowers, bound tight, with some more in the back seat.

By the time we entered Delhi, we had been stopped for "checking" 4 times, and each time we parted with a few hundred rupees for the grave sin of carrying a trunk load of flowers, so by the time we reached home they had cost us about 1200/- rupees.

They were fresh, of all sorts, and some of them lasted us for weeks.

+++

Earlier this morning, while out for a walk, I spotted this gent with a motor-cycle load of flowers that he had picked up from the Ghazipur agrirpoducts mandi in Delhi. Got talking, and he told me that the load on the back of his bike had cost him about 2000/- rupees, and that he hoped to double his money by the end of the day. 

His load was about one-quarter of what I had brought over in my car, at modest estimates, and when I told him my story, turns out that he was from the same part of the country where I had picked my flowers up from a few years ago.

How much would these flowers have cost him where they were grown, I asked him?

"Not more than 400 rupees, straight from the farm," was his immediate answer, "I used to work at one such farm, but realised there is more money made by the traders, so here I am."

And then he told me, also, the complete economics on how flowers move from growing areas to cities. As well as the established cost escalations at every small check-post, toll-booth, entry point, exit point, and everything else, en route.

Holi is a festival of many colours in India.

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