The Begum Bazaar wholesale market is awash with the brightest of colours for Holi Poornima to be celebrated on Sunday. Dozens of shops have cropped up overnight selling colours in sachets and small boxes of powder that can be turned into liquid colours to be sprayed and splashed.
While the going rate for coloured powder is ₹30 per kg for wholesalers, retail buyers have to pay up to ₹50 unless they can bargain. The unsaid fact about these colours is that they are loaded with chemicals; some of which are known carcinogens like cadmium or lead and chromium. “These colours are cheap because they are chemicals,” says Geetha Reddy of Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University.
So, whatever happened to organic colours, eco-friendly Holi?
Herbal alternative
The cheapest herbal alternative is a dry pink colour developed by Lucknow-based National Botanical Research Institute which is being sold for ₹120 per kilo. “Most of the natural or organic colours are priced high. Only the rich can afford them or want to buy them. Most wholesale buyers want colours that their customers can afford,” says Deep Kumar Agarwal, who has stocked gulal and other colours in his shop.
Near College of Home Science, Saifabad, Laxman sits with small white boxes stocked with colours. “Each box is ₹100 and it will have 250 grams of herbal colour. We have five colours,” says Laxman, whose total stock at the retail outlet is six kilos.
In contrast, most of the shops at Begum Bazaar have tonnes of colours and the business is such that shopkeepers don’t have time for small talk. “This dry powder which turns into gold or pink colour costs ₹1,100 per kilo. Each box has 10 grams and it can turn a bucket of water into that of colour,” says J. Dileep of Bhavani Colours, who has packed 12 small boxes with the colour and retails it for ₹90 which costs ₹ 30 per box. “The retailers also need to make a profit,” he says with a smile.
The challenge of natural or organic colours fizzles out at the price barrier. “Natural colours cannot be as cheap as chemical colours as it requires a long process to create them. We first developed them as vegetable dyes for colours, then modify them for use on Ganesh idols and now we have come up with eco-friendly colours for Holi. They have scope for export as well,” says Ms. Reddy of JTSAU which has manufactured two tonnes in five colours.
