What a happy Holi mess on Gateshead's Baltic Square!
The fun of a Hindu festival
Embracing a religion isn’t something you imagine anyone doing with fun as the prime motivating factor.
I recently watched a documentary about Julian of Norwich, a 14th Century Christian mystic who ‘saw the light’ while apparently at death’s door.
Having recovered (miraculously, as it seemed) she – for Julian was indeed a woman – wrote a book called Revelations of Divine Love and shut herself away in a cell attached to a church for the rest of her days.
No doubt she got something out of it. Possibly she’s smiling down at us now from her heavenly perch, happy as a sandboy (or girl) – but to many people it will seem a hard-won perk.
Almost certainly there are ‘hair shirt’ elements of any religion (fasts, supreme acts of self-denial, epic pilgrimages, self-flagellation, beds of nails…) but down on Baltic Square on Saturday afternoon it would have been hard to argue that Hindus don’t know how to have fun.
The Holi Festival of Colours is, according to my rudimentary research, an annual celebration of love, new life and the coming of spring. It also marks the triumph of good over evil.
I get the impression that, rather like Christmas, it’s as religious as you want it to be. Cease to be a devout Christian or Hindu and there are some things just too good to give up.
In the case of the former, it might be the giving and receiving of gifts or sitting down for a slap-up meal (surely that must be in the Bible somewhere).
In the case of Hinduism, it has to be what unfolded on Baltic Square, just ahead of the scheduled time because… well, there you are with a pot of powder paint in your hand and the urge to chuck it over everyone else suddenly can be suppressed no longer.
Come on! Surely we’ve all been there?
So slightly ahead of the 3pm metaphorical starter’s gun, the first wisps of colour appeared above the crowd being whipped up by DJ Juggy D in his yellow suit.
Anticipation had been mounting throughout the afternoon as Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art joined forces with GemArts, that Gateshead-based champion of South Asian culture, to ensure another memorable Holi Festival of Colours and another epic clean-up job.
This was my first time. It was something I felt I had to see, the joyous abandon, the mess, the spectacle.
People such as theatre producers spend thousands, millions even, ensuring a thrilling spectacle and all that’s required, it turns out, is lots of pots of coloured powder and permission to hurl. In some other contexts it would be called vandalism.
A succession of musical performers had been stoking the atmosphere before Juggy D, including the Madhura Godbole Bollywood Dance Group and the Bombay Baja Brass Band.
With the air still full of yellow, orange and turquoise (all these colours, I was told, have particular significance… but all could be removed with a quick wash and a spin) the Zephyrus Arts Bollywood dance group took to the stage.
The beats were frenetic, the paint-throwing enthusiastic and the weather played ball by not chucking it down, which would have put a real dampener on proceedings.
There were workshops and activities inside Baltic too – henna design, flower collage, Bollywood dance and more. Also performances of South Asian music and movement. The café spaces had been specially decorated. All very jolly, everyone having a good time.
I managed not to get powdered. What a wuss!
There was a special corral for ticket-holders, those eager to be part of the show and happy to wend their way home afterwards looking like characters from a pre-schoolers’ TV show, smeared with all the colours of the rainbow.
I did try for a quick chat with Vikas Kumar MBE who has done great things as director of GemArts and been with it since the start.
But he was in the thick of things, drowned out by Juggy D going mental with the microphone and rapidly vanishing into a human sea of primary colours. He did manage a thumbs up.
So spring has sprung… and no matter that the clocks don’t change until the end of the month. The colours have been thrown and that’s what counts.