Dinesh Soni, the owner of the iconic Anmol Lassi shop on Mint Street, is a semi-permanent fixture in the area. The brusque yet affable man, in large sunglasses and light cotton kurtas, can be seen beckoning customers, new and old, to try his kesar lassi for nearly 363 days of the year. In five days though, his shop is scheduled for its first annual holiday.
“Mint Street is the ‘raja area’ of Chennai during Holi. Anyone who wants to celebrate the festival has to come here. It is where all the action is. Monday will be a dramatic fest,” he says, speaking of one of the city’s original North Indian settlements. Every Holi, colours take over the street with walls, roads and people, resembling a paint palette. There is music booming in corners and food flowing out of small shops. “From the starting point of the street to the white walls of the Shree Chandraprabhu Jain temple, one will witness a sea of people on the day,” he says.
Dinesh makes Holi sound like a sport and himself, a player. “It has been five years since I retired,” he says. “It is for the youngsters now,” he says.
Twenty metres from his shop, a group of children is out with their mothers to buy their first set of Holi colours for the season. After some negotiations and tears, they settle on purchasing a ‘trolley tank’, the latest trend in the world of water guns. “It holds a lot of water and can be lugged around because it has wheels. The other guns, resembling AR-15s, are also selling well,” says S Bharati.
For three generations, Bharati’s family has been selling fruits in the area. One week before Holi, their stations transform and their faces often have specks of green, purple and pink. “We buy colour at the wholesale shops on Devaraja Mudali Street and sell them in smaller packets here. From Thursday onwards, we are anticipating massive crowds. Besides the pink, green and purple colours that tend to sell the best, there is also the silver and gold that tend to do well,” she says.
Shopping for Holi festival is on full swing with the festival of colours round the corner, seen on Mint street in Chennai on Tuesday. | Photo Credit: B. Jothi Ramalingam
Iridescent shades
Over the last four years, the sale of organic colours has increased with more people preferring to purchase packets of this marginally more expensive product (a 100grams packet costs ₹50 versus the regular colours that cost ₹30) because it rubs off with one wash. K Raju, a wholesaler running K. Manavaliah Turmeric Kumkum shop, says that it does not irritate the skin. “A lot of school-going children and employees in corporate offices prefer to play with this material,” he says.
For hardcore Holi fans, S Vijayalakshmi’s stall opposite the Jain temple, stocks up on ‘pukka’ or long-stay colours. This salesperson says that she has played Holi in these very streets since she was young. She comes back every year, now with her children. “We also make decent sales on the day of the festival,” she says.
Another seller, V Ramani says that the usual mix of balloon, glitter and slime, will be sold on Saturday and Sunday under the radar. “People come all the way from Coimbatore, Tindivanam and Villupuram only during the weekend,” she says.
Over the years, the nature of Holi in Sowcarpet has changed. G Ashok Kumar, who has been running a kadi-kachori stall on Mint Street since 1984 says that it was once limited to the Marwari community living in Sowcarpet. Now however, college students throng the area on Holi day. It crosses culture and several Tamil brethren often take part, he says. It has amplified the scale of the celebration, he says.
“Holi is the day where one reconciles with the enemy. This year will be no different,” he says.
