Holi hai! From fear to flirtation, Hindi movies show rainbow of mood and colour

New Delhi: Mostly joyous but sometimes a sense of dread too, Holi in its many colours has played out in movies through song and dance and also dramatic plot twists - right from the flirtatious Ja re hat natakhat… in the 1959 film Navrang to the menacing Darr in 1993.

The spring festival, which blurs many boundaries with people smearing colour on each other, the one day in the year where many feel free to approach even strangers with the line bura na mano Holi hai, has long played a key role in propelling the narrative arc in Hindi cinema.

In 2013's Ye Jawani Hai Deewani, Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone dance rapturously to the tune of Balam Pichkari and it is through their Holi celebration that the heroine is shown as evolving from being shy and reserved to confident and someone quite her own person.

In Kati Patang, the hit 1971 film starring Rajesh Khanna and Asha Parekh, the song Aaj Na Chhodenge is the tool to indicate the shift in the relationship between the hero and heroine, who is dressed in white and pretending to be a widow. The song ends with Khanna's character ultimately putting colour on Parekh's white sari, indicating that they are ready to take on societal disapproval.

Two years later came Phaagun with Dharmendra and Waheeda Rehman where too Holi plays a crucial role in the relationship between the couple, a struggling writer and a woman from an affluent family.

During the song Piya sang khelo hori phagun aayo re, Dharmendra's character puts colour on his wife, but she chides him for spoiling her expensive sari. Humiliated, her husband leaves the house. Years later, they reunite on another Holi.

The white of a woman who has lost her husband and the rainbow colours of Holi... the contrast is a familiar trope in Hindi movies, a pointer to how far life has come for her and how colourless it is.

Holi features twice in the 1975 cult classic Sholay.

"Holi kab hai, kab hai Holi?" It may seem a banal question. But this was spoken by Amjad Khan's fearsome dacoit Gabbar Singh in the film. And it came with the portent of dread. Just after follows the merrymaking song Holi Ke Din, which ends in a bloodbath.

The song prominently features Dharmendra and Hema Malini but also the silent, white clad figure of Jaya Bachchan, who plays a young woman widowed too early. There is also Amitabh Bachchan dressed in black. A flashback shows Jaya as a carefree, young woman throwing colour with abandon on Holi.

The 1981 film Silsila used Holi as a dramatic clutch. The song Rang Barse, picturised on Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjeev Kumar, Jaya Bachchan and Rekha, brings to surface the complicated relationship between two married couples.

In a key moment, Bachchan’s character Amit, under the influence of 'bhaang', proudly declares that he is the "yaar" of the gori, pointing at Rekha's Chandni, his former lover, in front of her husband (Kumar) and his wife played by Jaya Bachchan.

Bachchan has been at the centre of another popular Holi song -- Holi Khere Raghubira from Baghban (2003). It is after that song that Bachchan's recently retired character tells his joint family that he and his wife (Hema Malini) want to live with their children. The children decide to split their parents up, setting the main plot of the film into motion.

Long before that came V Shantaram's 1959 film Navrang that used celebrations around Holi for a mischievous fight between lovers in the song "Ja re hat natakhat, naa chhed mera ghoonghat".

In the 2000 film Mohabbatein, the festival is celebrated with three young couples at the centre while Shah Rukh's character imagines the presence of his dead lover, played by Aishwarya Rai. The song in question is Soni soni akhiyon wali. In Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Ram Leela in the same year, Padukone features in Lahoo muh lag gaya. Her character is celebrating Holi when she encounters Ranveer Singh's character, and they start flirting.

But Holi, which sees inhibitions melt away, can also spell fear and doom.

In 1993 came Darr and Damini, both starring Sunny Deol, that used the festival as an important plot point.

In the Yash Chopra-directed \Darr, Shah Rukh Khan's Rahul plays an obsessive stalker to Juhi Chawla's Kiran. Deol is Chawla's boyfriend and later husband.

During a key scene in the movie, Rahul comes disguised as one of the dhol players. His face is unrecognisable in the many colours of Holi as he witnesses the romance between Deol and Chawla's characters with anger.

In Damini, the title character Damini witnesses her husband (Rishi Kapoor)'s younger brother and his friends gangrape the domestic help on Holi. The incident serves as the central conflict of the movie, with Meenakshi Seshadri's Damini struggling between her sense of justice and familial pressure. She ultimately chooses to become a witness in the case.

Cinema is a rainbow of many an emotion, and Holi is a helpful tool to spool it out.