The holi virus

Even in these dire days of riots and viruses, it never fails to lift my spirits. Every morning, as I walk to my workshop, I marvel at how beautiful Santiniketan is in spring. Tagore, who wrote many an ode to this season, actually instituted a little festival to usher in the spring by students of his school and university.

The tradition of celebrating “Basanto Utsav” as it was named, on the day of holi has been a reality in the University since then. First, students would put up a formal song and dance programme and afterwards, they would split into little groups to continue the same. The audience was locals and a few Rabindrasangeet aficionados from Kolkata.

However, in recent years the tourists, mainly from Kolkata, made this festival their own. The hotel lobby couldn’t be happier. The crowds swelled each year till last year, it crossed 200,000 people. There were stampedes, shortage of water and toilets and the university authorities decided enough was enough. They declared that this year the festival would not be held on holi which is a public holiday but on some other day in spring.

The hotel lobby and the tourist trade foresaw a huge dip in revenue and approached the small business-friendly Mamata government to intervene. The compromise solution was that the festival would be held on the day of holi but the university would only arrange for the cultural programme while the state administration would take the responsibility of all other arrangements.

Having abdicated its role, the university sat back to watch what the administration planned. With an obvious eye on municipal elections in the near future and Assembly elections soon after, the state held out an expenditure chest of Rs 1 crore to make arrangements. The newspapers alleged that the vice-chancellor was then summoned to Delhi and his decision to hand over such a social festival to the Trinamool on a platter was questioned by his Bharatiya Janata Party bosses. Like all else this too had become a pawn for political one-upmanship.

They covered the field where the programme was to be held in a maze of bamboo much like in political rallies. The field was surrounded by Indian style pots covered with ugly gleaming tin. And uglier plastic water tanks.

What took the cake was that the Tagore’s university area too was blocked out by bamboo barricades and tin sheets. Tagore’s festival of beauty had truly become a celebration of slummy ugliness. The argument was that this was all to restrict the lumpen elements in the crowd from jumping fences to enter the university’s core area and get near the student hostels.

Decades ago, tourists who came to Santiniketan were hopeful that their stay would coincide with some adivasi festival and they would be able to catch a glimpse of their immensely beautiful rhythmic music and dance. For tourists of today, things are much easier. Many adivasi dance groups have calling cards and well-heeled tourists can call them to come and perform as they sip on their single malts.

I wondered why the university authorities would want students to make spectacles of themselves in front of lumpens who might scale fences to get close to student hostels. Why would their families allow their wards to so participate?

Anyway, the good news came in as I was trying to wrap my head around these thoughts. Two days before the event, by which time much of the Rs 1 crore of tax payers’ money had been spent in making arrangements, the university decided to cancel the programme because of the COVID-19 scare.

Tagore is dead. Long live Tagore, I thought to myself.