Toast Bill with a glass of som ras

Toast Bill with a glass of som ras

Hamse najariya kahe pheri re, o balamwa (why have you turned your face away, my love).

The thumri in raag Behag sung by Girija Devi has to be the perfect introduction to India when Bill Clinton wakes up in the Chandragupta suite of Delhi's Maurya Sheraton early today. Radha's yearning for Krishna, her errant lover, who has willed the night that's just gone by to his gopis, fills the twilight zone between darkness and dawn. The singer's paan-stained voice claws at the diminishing night, another unfulfilled night. Tohey leke sanwaria nikal chal be (let us both go away together), now it's a dadra in raag Mishra Pilu, whose name itself denotes the colours of the riotous morning that's just about to break. The colours of abeer, gulal, of the yellow-orange tesu flowers, the magical colours of Holi.

It is now morning. Surya, the sun god, also called the Divya Gandharva, or divine musician, is now beginning to dominate the day. On Delhi's ancient ridge, close to Clinton's hotel, the silk cotton trees, all abloom, glow warmly. In the Uttar Pradesh hinterland, just a few kilometers beyond the hotel, the women get ready to dilute bhang a form of marijuana still legal in the land of the Brajbhasha into preparations of thandai, ladoos and pakoras. (Perhaps Clinton will be offered a glass even as he readies for his day-tour of Bangladesh.) Inhaling becomes an option only later, much later, when the women have rubbed colour into the faces of otherwise untouchable men and torn down gender barriers, if only for the day.

It is through spring, which climaxes in the festival of Holi, that descriptions of Krishna's rasleela are most vivid in the scriptures. In the Bhagwat Purana, Krishna's love-play with his gopis is truly of epic proportions: ``By engaging in battles with fingernails; and by playful derision, glances and smiles the Lord aroused the women of Vraja to the peak of passion, and made love to them.''

The licentious gods in the Vedic and Puranic texts are a refreshing reminder to those who condemn the chhi-chi pursuit of pleasure, both in the East and West. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, for example, Brahma is shown as committing incest, elsewhere he is said to have lusted for Parvati even as he was conducting her marriage with Shiva. In the Shiva Purana, when the other gods grow worried over the love play of Shiva and Parvati that lasts thousands of years and want him to pay attention to other more mundane matters, it is Parvati who curses them for ruining her erotic pleasure. By the 12th century, Jayadeva's Gitagovinda finally transforms Krishna into the ideal lover, the diffused sexuality of the gopis now transmuted into the single protagonist, Radha.

``Though entwined in her arms/though crushed by the weight of her breasts/ though smitten by her fingernails/though bitten on the lips by her small teeth/ though overwhelmed by the thirst of her thighs/ his locks seized by her hands/ inebriated with the nectar of her lips/he drew immense pleasure from such sweet torments/strange indeed are the ways of love.'' Thus does Jayadeva weave a web of passion, one that till today, climaxes in the season of song around the festival of Holi.

Whether it was the iconoclasm of Kumar Gandharva, the sensuality of Pandit Jasraj, the yearning of Shobha Gurtu or their much younger contemporary, Shubha Mudgal, Holi emerges a festival charged with the sensual spontaneity of the Indian woman.

The repressive years of British rule in India destroyed much of that ras, that mood, so much so that titillation has practically taken over the mind. But it's Holi now, a time for bonhomie among strangers, a time to renew and reforge old relationships, a time to rediscover disused friendships -- Atithi devo bhava or guest is God. With Clinton in town, som ras, the preferred drink of Hindu gods, could be used to toast a true devotee of Krishna.