changeadminI have been feeling strangely detached from Indian festivals for a few years now. What unsettles me is that this feeling does not come from non-participation.
I am present. I show up in a festive attire. I wish people. I light lamps. I put rang-gulal. I make intricate rangolis. I attend gatherings. And yet, I do not quite know how to participate anymore.
The loneliness I feel throughout the year becomes sharper during festivals. Indian festivals are meant to amplify a sense of belonging. Instead, they often amplify distance.
Over time, I have come to feel that two things may be at play here: money and nature, and how the balance between them has shifted.
I come from an agricultural family in Chhattisgarh. Here, Indian festivals never arrived abruptly on the calendar. They approached gradually, rhythmically, almost playfully.
Holi did not begin on the day we bought colours. It began weeks earlier, when the palash trees would burst into orange flames.
The land itself would begin to hint at celebration. We did not need a notification. The forest announced it.
I later lived in Bengal for some time. There, Durga Puja did not simply arrive with hoardings and LED lights. It arrived with kaash grass swaying in large cotton-like stretches across open fields.
I remember listening to songs by Shreya Ghoshal in which the kaash fields were invoked to welcome the Devi. Once I learned to notice them, I could not unsee them. The grass became an emotional calendar. I knew the festival was near.
Back home, our folk songs did something similar. One beautiful creation by Lakshman Masturiya carries this spirit:
मन डोलय रे मांघ फगुनवा
रस घोलय रे मांघ फगुनवा
पीपर उलहोवय अऊ डूमर गुलोवय
गरती तेन्दू चार मौउहा लुभोवय
मेला मड़ाई गंजागे झमाझम
पुरवईया आवय गरोड़ा उड़ोवे
छांव आंवय जांवय लजावय मुंह खोलय
गांव गूंजे गमके अमरईया
कुके रे कारी कोयलिया
मन डोलय रे मांघ फगुनवा
My heart sways, O month of Maagh–Phagun,
You dissolve sweetness into the air…
The peepal sheds its leaves, the fig blossoms open,
The earth entices with tendu and mahua flowers…
The dark koel calls out from afar —
My heart sways, O Maagh–Phagun.
The song captures something we often forget: Holi has always been more than a festival of colours. It is a celebration of colour in nature. As spring sets in, joy rises almost involuntarily. Love feels easier. Playfulness feels natural.
Where I come from, Holi is also a harvest festival. We offer the first crop of wheat to our family deity. It is gratitude woven into seasonality.
Another line from the same folk tradition says:
बिहाव पठोनी के लगिन धरागे
संगी जहुंरिया मया मा बंधागे
The wedding season has found its auspicious hour,
Friends and companions are bound together in affection and love.
After harvest, families are relatively free from the farming cycle. This becomes the season for visiting neighbouring villages, for matchmaking, for strengthening bonds.
Even the weather participates: the sun plays shyly, the breeze is gentle, and outdoor gatherings feel effortless. Everything conspires toward celebration.
Nature prepared us emotionally long before we prepared materially. Our senses perceived the onset. The Indian festivals did not need to be forced by the mind or scheduled by the calendar.
And this is where I feel the imbalance today.
In many urban homes, participation seems structured differently. Every ritual requires something to be bought. Sweets must be ordered. Decorations must be sourced. Gifts must be exchanged.
Even “traditional” items are often acquired through e-commerce carts. Contribution becomes monetary rather than participatory.
There is an irony here that I cannot shake off. Money was meant to be a token for transaction, a promise of future reciprocity.
As I once understood from reading Sacred Economics, it symbolised trust: I cannot repay you right now, but here is something that carries my commitment forward.
But when celebration becomes dependent on money, participation becomes uneven.
In the village, everyone could contribute something: wood collected from fields for Holika Dahan, cow dung cakes from homes, and grains from the new harvest.
The resources were abundant and locally available. Contribution was physical, visible, and shared.
Now it is easier to collect money and buy everything from the market. It is clean. It is transparent. It is efficient.
But it also quietly changes who can participate.
Unless you are an earning member of the family, your agency is reduced. Children sit scrolling endlessly. Grandparents wait for someone to give them money and take them to the market.
Non-earning members experience festivals through permission and provision rather than direct contribution. The market mediates entry into celebration.
I began asking myself: why does a festival day no longer feel different from a normal day? Offices may declare holidays, but time feels flattened.
There is no slow build-up. No sensory crescendo. Just another day, punctuated by purchases and social media posts.
Perhaps what I miss most is rhythm.
In agricultural life, time is cyclical. Indian festivals are woven into the cycles of sowing, harvesting, blooming, and migration.
In urban life, time is linear: deadlines, quarters, weekends. The calendar announces festivals, not the soil.
The palash no longer matters if we do not see it. The koel’s call is drowned in traffic. The kaash grass grows far from our gated communities.
Folk songs once served as cultural reminders to look up and notice seasonal shifts. Today, algorithmic notifications tell us when a sale begins, not when the wind changes.
I do not romanticise the past. Rural life had its own hardships and exclusions. Markets have made many things accessible and convenient.
But I cannot ignore the subtle emotional shift from ecological anticipation to market execution. Perhaps the question is not whether commercialisation exists, it clearly does, but whether we can restore some balance.
Can we teach children to notice seasonal signs again?
Can preparation involve making rather than merely buying?
Can contribution be measured in effort, not just expenditure?
If the onset of Holi once began with the blooming of palash, perhaps participation can begin again with noticing something that does not cost money.
My reflections are small, drawn from limited experience across Chhattisgarh, Bengal, and the urban spaces I now inhabit.
But they leave me with a lingering thought: Indian festivals were once collective rehearsals of belonging, guided by nature’s cues. When those cues fade, and markets take over, belonging becomes something to acquire rather than something to inhabit.
And maybe the change we need to start, on our streets, in our homes, within ourselves, is as simple as noticing the first flower before we open the shopping app.
The article is contributed by Ankit Sahu.
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