“They need some Punjabi blood here”, I whooped as we loped
down to Nopparat Beach. The road curved down from our hotel, over the creek,
and into the clear light of the bay, Krabi’s signature islands still shadowy in
the early sun . On the pavement outside a store, a little clump of children
stood around a large blue plastic drum. Tentative, they splashed some clear
water on us from a little kitchen bowl. “Happy Sonkrant”, I beamed, my hands
folded. “Namaste”, then swooped into the drum,
my enormous hands cupped into twin scoops, and showered water in arcs of
joy.
“Happy Sonkrant”, 20 yards down, I teased a garden hose from
a smiling teenager, and sprayed my son and our friends with the energy of a
North Indian Holi mobster. Our hosts beamed and smeared our cheeks with the
most innocent of white pastes – talcum powder and a daub of water. “Thank You”,
I turned the hose on them and did a bhangra jig.
Outside the Holiday Inn Resort, white tourists with pink
calves lined the kerb, wielding fat-barreled water-cannons in Disneyland
plastic colours. Thai hotel workers dressed in black tended hoses and vast plastic drums. “Happy Sonkran”, we
screeched, and grabbed a hose. Someone turned on generic pop and we bobbed and
sprayed.
A pick-up van slowed as it slithered towards us, teenagers
clustered around the drums tethered to its bed. “That’s evil!” Maya screeched
as they splashed us with iced water. “Turn the hose on them.” Some of the water
cannons followed suit, some more iced water was rained, and one pick-up van was
followed by the next.
Shack-owners and shop-keepers gave way to food stalls with
satay sticks and cut pineapple, with fried cockroaches and grilled cocoons. On
the beach, a thousand picnics celebrated the New Year with movable feasts and
Thai pop thumping from parked cars. It
was everybody’s Sonkran, if you wanted. Or not, if you didn’t. The streets were
awash with water from drums and pistols, hoses and plastic buckets, but no one
was sprayed unless they were willing. And though the young who cruised Ao Nang
on their motor cycles and vans were
well-fuelled by Singha beer, there was no drunken revelry, no hint of festive
energy turning renegade or threatening.
“Same-same like Sonkran?” our taxi-driver asked when I told
him about our Holi. “Indian festival have colour, no?” Yes, it has colour. Too
much colour. And too much energy. An energy that turned demonic and aggressive,
and had to be taken off the streets of my native Delhi. Shut behind the walls
of our homes and our clubs, and our farm-houses. Where like now only meets
like, and the public becomes private. Where the goodwill of a festival that
could spread clear across a bay, or an entire peninsula, is confined within tiny little pools isolated from each
other by sand banks of fear and privilege.
