HOLI ! IISER Mohali iShTYLE....

IISER Mohali has a record for its special "organic" holi. What I mean by "organic" is that we don't use artificial colours to play holi instead we use mud made up of freshly dug soil and water to play holi.

But as all we know before every play there should be some "foreplay" (haha please don't take offense) so what did we do for that? Well! we had THANDAAI and a special remedy to calm down every sense and keep us cool: BAM-BAM MUNAKKA (also known as BHAANG and it is obtained from the plant species CANNIBUS INDICA ). Preparing THANDAAI is also a big task you should know the perfect ratio of each component like almond, opium seeds, Fructus Anethi(सोफ) , and sugat. Making THANDAAI is a really challenging task so to escape the headache, we used CHAMAN THANDAAI , thanks to my friend SHIVAM for making it.

Now returning to the other cooling agent BAM-BAM MUNAKKA, according to Achyut Priya Shukla it is made up of many useful herbs like SONTH, JEERA(cumin), KAALI MIRCH(Black peper) etc but the most important part of it is CANNIBUS INDICA plant and i.e. nothing but our BHAANG.

Anyway Shivam had an interesting plan to distribute THANDAAI and BAM BAM MUNAKKA. He told it should be done in a traditional way, he poured the THANDAAI directly into the recipient's mouth, but but but..there was one more thing which went before THANDAAI….Yes! That was nothing but our BAM BAM MUNAKKA(Damn! I promised my mother so I didn’t take it). Well! I was happy with THANDAAI.

There was only one thing which every one said with his heart..."jai ho baba Bholenath"

After all this stuff, the “main course” started and that was ripping off the shirt. One of my junior, DUDI was the first victim of the “main course”, I think he will surely miss his IIT Delhi t-shirt.

All this was fine but the main ritual remained. Yes! There was a special swimming pool prepared with a lot of GHARA (soil) and (di hydrogen oxide+some metal salts) i.e. tap water for this occasion and special thanks to C.R. and his team for that.

All of us became victims one by one. But I shouldn't say victim because we enjoyed it a lot so now I would replace victim by “participant”(well this is the best word I could think with my limited knowledge of english).

There was no escape for anyone,whoever was there became the participant with a topless body and wrapped with mud all around HIS body(of course the participants were only boys ).

Girls also played

HOLI but they did it traditionally which means they played it with GULAAL and there was no wear and tear so all was FINE except for a shy

person like me who was semi nude in front of girls first time but one thing consoling me was that I was covered in MUD.

During all this DOA appeared and had a photo with us(although some of us wanted to make him a victim but they controlled their emotions some how), other faculty member Vinayak Sinha also came with some of his GERMAN collaborators, but he didn’t want to be a victim.

Ravinder(A YATN kid helping the "participants")

A mud fight

The sober version of HOLI

It all stopped when there was no one left with any cloths. After all this we got a nice lunch(long live SRC! Yay although KHEER was not good PER CHALTA HAI). At that time the people who had the COOLERS I described before started to react accordingly.