Ara residents purchasing herbal colours, gulal

Kumar Rajiv Nayan

Ara : With the Holi festival falling on March 2, 2018, people especially children and women at Ara are busy shopping. The people have become more health conscious this year and  preferring herbal colours and gulal and Chinese pichkaris even as the markets at Ara are flooded with gulal and colours in different shades, variety of sprays, balloons, pichkaris, masks and caps.

Ashu Kumar, a shop owner at Gopali Chowk, said that customers are now more health conscious and avoid chemical colours. He said Chinese colours and gulal at the rate of Rs 25 to Rs 30 per packet and spray cans are available at shops and are attracting the youngsters. Though the white foam spray is always in high demand, this time the white foam has been fused with Chinese colours and are available for Rs 45 to Rs 55. These colourful spray cans are very the school and college students.

Jyoti Thakur of Bichali Road selling Holi materials said that in the past people played with wet colours and dry gulal of different shades but the trend has changed with passage of time and now colourful Chinese spray cans are in demand.

Children thronged the shops at Gopali Chowk and Babu Bazaar areas to buy plastic pichkaris with cartoon character images instead of brass pichkaris and water tanks having capacity of 500 ml to 5 litres to play Holi.

Dr Rajiv Kumar, a Dermatologist, said that people should play Holi with colours and gulal but warned not to compromise with their health and void chemical colours that might cause asthma, eye, skin and renal infections.

Pooja Devi, a housewife, said that prices are sky rocketing but she had to purchase some clothes for children and provisions for the guests.

That apart,  political parodies in Jogira style have supplanted traditional Jogira and Holi songs in the social media. This is not first time when satirical Jogira and Holi songs have gone viral.