Phagwah – so much involved

Mar 29, 2021 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Kaieteur News-Yesterday, right on the heels of Palm Sunday, and in the next breath, we grasp at the essences of Phagwah, of this festival called Holi which was celebrated by over a billion Hindus. Holi has a smooth sound and fit, a perfect segue, since the Christian world also observes Holy Week at this time.
Phagwah – it is more than a day, more than the time of a national holiday celebrated joyously in the unprecedented circumstances of rules about gatherings and masks and distancing. Phagwah, at its core and in its sinews, is of a season. Of the goodwill that man can extend to his fellow man through extending one or two (or as many as are required) timely olive branches. Phagwah, amidst its rollicking local nature, is of the peace that comes to individuals, who are prepared and willing to forgive and forget, to forget by forgiving. We could use a bucket full of that healing liquid in this society, many such buckets filled to the point of overflowing their brims.
Phagwah also signifies that we are trying harder, despite our own pains and weaknesses, to harvest from within that which is of the good that is within each and every one of us, in ongoing efforts to banish the dark evils that also reside in us. It is not what grows overnight, or out of the thin air. We have to work at this as a place that is proud to be about of ‘One People, One Nation, One Destiny’ because we are honest about it, and so much as to mean it. That is one of the natural elements that Phagwah represents and which we must labour at in the fields that are our hearts and souls.
The potential for that kind of pristine fertility is there in all 750,000 of us and counting. We just have to work harder at cultivating and tapping into that fertility, so that we can reap the rich harvest of brotherhood and fellowship that can give to Guyana what is its due; so that we can give to ourselves first, and then our children next, and with our neighbours right next in line. Our neighbours should not be fenced off by the limitations of our politics, the blights of our history, the agonies of our memory. We must toil in the social fields of this land to remove those weeds from amidst the crop that promises to come. This is what Phagwah is about, and it is not limited to Hindus or Guyanese.
We have all of that within us, and much of it, for such is the rich uncultivated spaces that we have allowed to lay untouched, to lie wasted with the time always passing us by. On this occasion of Phagwah, we must resolve to be less about the evils that threaten, even as we remain on the lookout for them. We must be resolved to make it our duty to harness our energies and get down to tilling the soil that is of our souls so that we can reap the rewards. It can be harvest time for Guyana and Guyanese. It just must be, since we have the minerals in abundance in the land, we have them in the same lush quantities under the seabed, too.
Whenever Phagwah is observed, we must seek to bridge the gaps that stare at us in the face, sometimes with naked hostility. The scorching sun and the battering winds do not deter us, even when great physical exposure is part of the ordeal that must be faced. And so, too, we must not shrink from hostile sun and bruising winds that are too much an elemental presence in the social graces that make us see one way and one way only when we look at one another.
Amidst the profusion of colour, it is for us to be colour blind, in the rich variety of the human fruits in our national garden. That one is challenging here in the seeing of and reaching for such in all of its flavours and ripeness that we deny ourselves, when we either wall them off, or prune them in the bud from growing any further. Unless we make a sturdy effort to be otherwise, then we will always be the same, with all the heaviness and emptiness that tells us something is missing. It is one of the reasons, why the scale of our colour blindness must also be unlimited in the willingness of its receiving and accepting: open receptive hearts.
We can only be better for Phagwah and Palm Sunday when they are lived in the manner that the teachings deliver to us. It is only in the light of our bright incorruptibility, the colour of our simple decency, and the glow of the rich harvest that we put ourselves in a position to harvest what should be ours. But those become closer and more possible when all put in the efforts at nurturing that make the national harvest possible. A healthy, peaceful, and joyful Phagwah to all our readers and all Guyanese; however today is celebrated, by whomever.

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