How Holi Got Its Colours

When the little god Krishna was a boy, he was full of mischief and laughter, but one day his mother Yashoda found him sitting all glum and sulky.

“What is the matter, my love?” she asked.

Krishna scrunched up his face. “It isn’t fair, Maiya,” he grumbled. “My skin is dark, dark as a rain cloud, dark as the deep blue night, and Radha and the other children are all so much fairer than me. Why must I be such a different colour from everyone else?”

Yashoda hid a smile, for she knew her clever boy and his moods. “Well,” she said playfully, “if it troubles you so much that Radha is one colour and you are another, then why not simply colour her face? Smear it with any colour you like. Then who is to say what colour either of you really is?”

Krishna’s dark eyes went wide, and then they sparkled. What a wonderful, mischievous idea! Off he ran, laughing, with his hands full of bright powder, and the moment he found Radha, he smeared a great handful of colour right across her cheeks. She gasped, and then she laughed, and grabbed a handful right back. Soon all the children of the village had joined in, chasing and dodging and flinging colour everywhere. Red and yellow and green and pink and blue rained down, until every single face was a wild rainbow, and nobody, nobody at all, could tell who had been fair and who had been dark, who was a prince and who was a cowherd. They were all just colour, and all just laughing, together.

And that joyful, messy, laughing game is how the colours of Holi began. Once every spring, everyone throws colour at everyone else, and under all that bright powder, every face looks just the same.

There is an older story too, that grandmothers tell on the night before, when the great bonfires are lit: the tale of brave Prahlad, and a fire that could not burn him. But the colours, the wild and happy colours, those began with a sulky little boy, a wise mother, and a single fistful of powder thrown in fun.