The Last Color

by Vikas Khanna

  They ran all the way down to an Ambassador car waiting for them further up. Choti and Rekha climbed in and before she could say anything, Chintu gave her a hug.

  “Aren’t you coming with me?” Choti asked.

  “My world is here, Choti, this is the only one I know,” Chintu grinned, and rushed into the swell of people all around, instantly vanishing in the burst of crowds and color and the happy hopeful shouts of “Holi Hai!”

  Epilogue

  Varanasi, Holi Day, March 2012

  From bright colors to the last color of ash

  She had gathered all the widows in the dilapidated sun-bleached, time-worn ashram to prepare to celebrate Holi. But, when they had all been coaxed out of their cells—a task in itself—her colleagues, Alka and Geeta, informed her that a swelling horde of locals, security officers and police had barged in through the ashram’s gate and had seized the courtyard to try to keep the widows from enjoying their first-ever Holi celebration.

  “You’ve come all the way from Delhi for this, Noor Saxena. What is our next step going to be?” Alka asked her pointedly.

  Noor, aka Choti, touched the jute shoulder bag on her arm. In it, next to the Supreme Court Order, lay that most precious thing: the book of Tagore, that Noor’s grandfather had given her, and which she had, with her infinite spirit presence, found a way to guide her toward; helping her instinctively locate the magical pink book in a secret cubbyhole in the brick wall.

  She looked Alka in the eye and replied: “I am going to ensure these women get their Supreme Court-ordered freedom to further ‘sin’ and ‘destroy’ their culture with their own hands: I will help them grab fistfuls of gulal, of rose-pink and earth-red, and throw the color into the sky, I’ll help them play Holi in joyful abandon with their friends… as I had promised twenty years ago.”

  Alka grabbed her elbow. “Noor, the crowd outside is saying that if the widows even begin to play Holi, it will destroy everyone’s values and culture, not to mention condemning them all to hell,” she said.

  Filled with a confidence that could only have been derived from her having transcended her own namelessness, powerlessness, and inferiority—the same transcendence she so desperately wanted every widow in India to experience—she strode with bold steps toward the ashram door, with Alka and Geeta at her heels.

  “Well, this time the ball is in Choti’s court,” she said confidently.

  Noor once again stood at the same spot in the courtyard where, once, her kindest, oldest friend, with her white saree and bald head and timid manner, had risked everything—and lost her life—in order to take her in and save hers.

  The same yard across which rough animal hands had subsequently dragged her by the hair and then unceremoniously, without a shred of compassion or pity, thrown her into the Ganga.

  As Choti, now named Noor Saxena after the two women who had changed her life, Noor and Rekha Saxena, the journalist who fought alongside her and finally adopted her, combated those bitter memories, a murmur rose amongst all who had gathered, “Choti? Who is this Choti?” they seemed to be asking.

  She washed her face in the fountain on the veranda nearest the tulsi plant before going back into the ashram to face to the white-clad women, who were now fully armed with their favorite hues of gulal and Holi powder. “Come on, everyone, let’s go!” she said. “Let’s finally celebrate Holi, and share our joys and hopes with all of Varanasi, the entire nation, and the wider world.”

  Together Alka, Geeta, and she led the group of widows into the ashram’s open courtyard where they were accosted by the cops and angry locals, who began to collectively admonish them:

  “Look at today’s world, widows will play Holi, next we will hear that they want to live a new life! We won’t destroy our culture! Stop all this tamasha and get back to your ashrams.”

  She had known all along that the widows’ Holi color revolution wouldn’t come easily, but one had to start somewhere, right? Especially when facing one stubborn generation, sitting atop another, even more stubborn, even less forgiving history.

  A police inspector stood outside the ashram gates with a couple of his flunkeys. The crowd thronging behind them was at least fifty people strong.

  The inspector looked her up and down from top to toe, then gestured with his stick:

  “Aiy ladki, hey girl, grab your bags and get the hell out of here…”

  She looked him straight in the face and answered: “Sir, my name is Noor Saxena, I am an advocate in the High Court of Delhi. Please be civil in your speech…”

  “Eh, you don’t preach civility to me, get your stuff and get out; you and your kind are always looking to destroy the peace in this town…”

  “We’re only here to play Holi,” Alka said.

  The inspector looked mockingly around, “Oh hoh! Listen to them, so now these old widows are playing Holi? What next? Today they play Holi with colors, tomorrow they’ll start wearing makeup, painting their faces with color, and soon they’ll want to get married.”

  The inspector tried to grab her by the shoulder:

  “Don’t you dare touch me again,” she pulled herself away and spat at him coldly. “Let me remind you that you are committing two crimes here. First you are violating the orders of the Honorable Supreme Court and second, according to Section 46 Class 4 Criminal Procedure Code, being a male officer you cannot touch a female…”

  “Oh, accha, right, so now you are going to teach me the law, are you? I’ll see how these old crones play Holi. If I don’t grab each of them by their scrawny necks and throw them out of Varanasi I’ll change my name…”

  At this point, one of his junior policemen stepped forward and cautioned the inspector to hold back: “Sir, it’s best for you to leave. She has orders of the Supreme Court. The national and international media are going to be here soon to cover this event.”

  She looked up, startled, immediately recognizing the voice with her heart. Looking into the eyes of the young policeman, she said in disbelief: “Chintu?”

  Meanwhile the inspector was so baffled (did he even understand the ramifications of the day?) as to say nothing in reply, so she continued: “Perhaps, what your junior colleague is saying is too much for your brain to comprehend. Let me explain it to you once again: It will be considered a violation of the Supreme Court if anyone interrupts or interferes in this celebration.”

  She pulled the Supreme Court papers out of her bag and thrust them into the bewildered inspector’s face.

  Chintu spoke to him again, tersely this time, “Sir, let the widows celebrate. There are clear orders.”

  The inspector massaged his jaw and mustache for a few moments as he scanned the order.

  “Sir, it’s the law, sir,” Chintu said again.

  Finally his superior admitted defeat, folded the papers and handed them back to her and motioned to his people to leave. All the policemen left except one. He ordered the crowd to disperse. The widows were free to do as they please, and as they did, some of the onlookers—even the cop who had stayed behind—joined in the revelry...

  As she watched the smiling faces of the 200-strong procession of widows, now freely walking, laughing and talking on the same streets of Varanasi she had roamed as a homeless kid, she felt like she was gazing at the most familiar face in the world, like she was gazing into a mirror.

  The face looking in was Noor Saxena’s, the reflection staring back was that of her ten-year-old self, Choti.

  Color exploded everywhere from the dirty streets to the clear skies, across white walls and dirty walls, across the cremation ghats, and across every white saree, to forever brighten every formerly black-and-white mourning heart.

  Before that day, the widows of Varanasi had never dared touched color, lest they eternally suffer in sin. Today marked an entirely new celebration, a new “legal” and “sinless” celebration that deserved to have its own name, something like Holi, but much, much more.

  A festival for “the end of mourning.”

&n
bsp; Could Holi and those who celebrated it, embrace such a festival for as many generations as they had rejected it as sin? She didn’t know, but for now she was tempted to believe it possible.

  With everyone dancing and enjoying everything Holi had to offer, basking in its playful warfare of colors, all she wanted to do was wander off alone to the Varanasi ghats, pray, and take a dip in Ma Ganga.

  Dressed in Ma’s favorite Banarsi silk saree, the one reserved for special occasions, Noor Saxena strode down the steps toward Ganga Ma’s shore.

  With every step she descended, the name of her childhood called to her in her head. Choti, Choti, Choti…

  Did the name represent her identity, her past or her future, she didn’t know, but the name kept repeating itself, and in a voice that wasn’t her own. Was it Noor calling to her through everyone’s joined voices? She didn’t know.

  But then, as the knelt by the Ganga, the setting sun burnishing the gold border of her saree, she felt touched by a special light. Basking in this, she felt the warmest presence she had ever experienced. Warmer, softer, sweeter than the gentle winter rays of that same sun, which, once a long time ago, as Noor had predicted, she would eclipse.

  She turned toward the presence and thought she saw a flashing image of her old friend. First, she saw a vision of her alone on their terrace bench waving to her, and then suddenly her friend Noor was dancing in the midst of a colored cloud of her favorite pink hue, dancing so joyfully, and with such abandon as though she were drunk enough with color to collapse onto the ground and fall into some eternal pink dream of her own Nirvana.

  The old widow formed her lips into a smile, the biggest smile she had ever seen. The image puzzled her, but also caused her own smile to persist, as she, having reached Ganga’s magical, forgiving, all-embracing shores, knelt to recite her prayers and light a lamp in the memory of Noor.

  Acknowledgements

  I first saw the widows of Varanasi in 2009, when they were prohibited from playing Holi, and then later in 2012, when I saw the white widows drenched in the colors of Holi. The image haunted me; I could not forget the sight of their joyous abandon. It was not about the color, it was about the transformation of society. It touched me so deeply that I wrote a book about them. But even that was not enough to capture the beauty of Ma Ganga and the beautiful but scarred city of Varanasi, so I went back and made a movie.

  I want to thank all the people who were with me on this journey. My American editor, Paul Assimacopoulos, for spending hundreds of hours with me, helping me translate the emotions that I generally expressed in my native language, and my Indian editor, Nandita Aggarwal, for helping me preserve my tonality and the authenticity of my voice. To Rajbilochan Prasad for seamlessly designing the book.

  My heartfelt thanks to India’s legendary actress, Neena Gupta for playing the character of Noor so perfectly. Jitendra Mishra for encouraging me to make the movie – The Last Color. I am not sure without him, I would have come this far.

  I have to mention the three films that completely inspired me for taking up such a challenge of making one: Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali, Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay and Drishyam Film’s Masaan.

  Finally, my heartfelt gratitude to the House of Omkar for believing in the story and producing the film.