Holi days

Very serene, sunny, Sunday morning in north-eastern Antigua, where I live, can hear the comforting chorus of birdsong, shiny crows, tiny bannaquits, bawdy sparrows, an occasional bejewelled hummingbird, and glimpse them flitting restlessly across my verandah. I feed them all, and since it's very hot, the birdbath dries out quickly leaving an ugly muddy sludge, the smelly residue of the piped water here.

The bougainvilleas are blooming in profusion, the cerise and royal purple bunches, all the more startling against the white picket fence running atop the cracking concrete wall. Swaying in the strong, trade winds that whip through the small valley, the neem trees whisper and whistle incessantly, as they discard another sudden shower of crackling gold leaves, carpeting the parched lawns.

Mount Pleasant rises nearby, a somnolent limestone curve, gleaming green and pale yellow in the tropical light; from which steep stone faces streaked dirty gray, peep out sullenly.

My fingers are stained magenta from the "abeer," or coloured liquid crystals that I mixed in water, for my eager children to celebrate Holi, or the ancient Hindu spring festival which was marked by us on Friday, the full moon day of the Phalgun month.

Dyed powders or "abrack," symbolic of the bright colours of the season, are also generously splashed on each other, and in our case, on the balding head of my most reluctant husband, and an overly-excited dog, who is still walking around with a rather pink coat!

A public holiday in some countries like Guyana, Holi coincided with Good Friday this year, so our observances were muted and mostly confined to the late afternoon.

Someone turned up outside our gate offering power-washing services and scuttled off in sheer panic, when my absent-minded spouse, his face an alarming mess of bloody red, riotous purple and sheer rose, hurried out to meet him. When rebuked, my husband regretfully announced, "I should have told him, my wife just 'buss' (burst) my head!"