Happy Holi: The Last Festival Before Covid
Portraits taken on Holi, the last Indian festival before the coronavirus hit Kolkata and everything changed
Holi is the Indian spring festival, also called the “Festival of Colours“, and takes place on the first full moon in March. The festival is celebrated by people getting together and using brightly coloured powder to dye each other’s faces – “playing Holi” is how Indians describe it. And although it’s a Hindu festival, it’s celebrated by mostly anyone, no matter their religion.
In 2020, Holi took place on 10 March. I was living and working in Kolkata at the time. Those early weeks in March now seem a lifetime away. Covid was already making headlines in China, Europe and the USA. In India the virus was also in the news, but the pandemic still seemed very far away, despite a few (isolated) cases in Rajasthan and Kerala. At the time, mostly everyone in Kolkata was still feeling safe. But even then, things were already beginning to change. Fake news were distributed through WhatsApp and Facebook, warning people not to engage in Holi, as the powders used are imported from China and would likely carry the coronavirus. The fake news got debunked, but still caught on, and even ‘though many people did play Holi on and around the 10th (the festival takes place over several days), one could feel that it was a more muted affair than in previous years.
The world still felt relatively normal back then in Kolkata, but how quickly things then changed: only a few days later, the first case of the virus was diagnosed in the city. Immediately, all schools were closed, with one day’s warning, including the schools where I worked in. International tourists were swiftly banned from entering the country, and eight days after Holi, the government announced a moratorium on international flights, again with but three days’ warning. I booked a flight back to Europe on the very day of the announcement and left Kolkata on the 21st of March, more than two months earlier than planned, on what turned out to be the very last international flight out of Kolkata. A country-wide lockdown came into effect two days later, i.e. exactly two weeks after Holi.
As anyone following the news knows, India is not doing so great these days. The virus, once it spread, was impossible to get under control, as is no surprise given how densely populated India is, and how very few people even get a chance at social distancing. Many long months of lockdown brought hardships on a vast part of the population, but didn’t slow the virus; the numbers are still rising as of now (i.e. August 2020). A number of subsequent religious holidays came and went but could not be celebrated. Indians love to celebrate their religious festivals, so for them this was yet another blow in a year full of hardships. No wonder that for many people in India, these months seem like the end of time.
So, here then, in memory of happier times, and above all in memory of the joyful six months which I spent in Kolkata, in the “City of Joy” as it is called, a selection of portraits taken during that still very colourful and joyful Holi festival. The portraits were partially taken of random people in the part of Kolkata where I lived (Kalighat), and also include portraits of friends with whom I celebrated Holi. This article then is dedicated to all the friends I had to leave behind in Kolkata, and whom I miss greatly.
To happier times ahead.
P.S.: on a more personal level: as it did with many people, the lockdown (excasperated in my case by the sudden departure from India) provoked in me a “writer’s block”, that is a lack of inspiration which extended not only to writing but also to photography, of which I have done little in the past several months. This is also the reason why I publish this article only so many months after my return to Europe. A recent trip to Italy cured that block and I expect to be more proliferate again.
