On the other hand, eco-friendly colours are usually based on talcum powder or a mixture of wheat/rice flour, and alum in a ratio of 1:2.

Different flowers, leaves and other crushed ingredients are used for the desired colour. For example, the red and magenta can be obtained from bixa seeds, beetroot, hibiscus flowers, pomegranate seeds and madder herb; green from palak, glyricidea, nirgudi, hibiscus, tulsi, henna, coriander and leaves of gulmohour; yellow from marigold flowers, turmeric, tamarind, lemon and chickpeas/chana dal; orange from cocum and turmeric; black from harda; blue from the indigo plant; and brown from bark of walnut trees.

These colour releasing ingredients are mixed with the talcum powder or wheat/rice flour to form a smooth paste to which alum and water is then added. Since the colours are from botanical sources, they are safe for humans, our earth and the environment.

It is certainly worth one’s while to locate and use eco-friendly colours only. Several social service organisations produce and market them, while some others teach children how to make them. Likewise, campaigns are undertaken to encourage people to play Holi with such natural colours.

Responsible citizens respect Nature and their fellow beings and so do not fell trees to fuel bonfires, or light them in areas where the smoke adversely affects people. Cow dung cakes are increasingly being utilised.

Animal welfare societies remind people that domestic animals (dogs, cats, cattle, goats, sheep, donkeys, etc.) do not like colour thrown on them. Most Holi colours are harmful if inhaled and known to result in severe skin infections which have easily spread among other animals and humans.

A couple of days prior to Holi there is a brisk sale of percussion instruments such as daphlis, duffs, halgis, dholaks, dumrus, dhols and tashas. Some are made of leather (goat, cow), few plastic, but the traditional drums contain deer skin.

Sookhi Holi

At Sohana village, on the outskirts of Chandigarh, Holi has always been celebrated in a ghastly manner because for generations people have believed that by doing so the village would not be poor.

Animal skeletons and rotting body parts of cattle and dogs are therefore brought in the dead of night from a dumping ground and hung up outside shop and house doors. At the end of the following day they are taken down and sent back to the place from where they came. Holi is played on the streets by throwing ash of carcasses and sewage water at each other, but inside their homes they use the usual colours.

Aeda Alert