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Monkey's day out
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Call it Boore Habba, All Fool's Day, or Holi, we need to stretch the limits of what's permissible at least one day in a year
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Fools are even seen as wise men and philosophers in cultures across the world. — Photo: AFP
IT'S THE father of all days. All Fool's Day, after all, existed long before everyone and his mother, brother, sister, brother-in-law, boss, friend, lover... came to have days named after them.
Even those who are now in their sixties or more would remember waking up their unsuspecting parents with a "Hey, a spider on your pillow!" and gleefully shouting "April fool, April fool!" This glee grows dimmer as you grow older, wiser, and a bit of a fool all year round. Mark Twain hit the nail on its head when he said: "The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year."
This day dedicated to playing pranks, surprisingly, has a solemn origin. Most ancient cultures celebrated New Year's Day on April 1. It closely followed the Vernal Equinox (end of March, the time of our own Ugadi too). In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered a new calendar (the Gregorian calendar) to replace the Julian calendar. The new calendar called for New Year's Day to be celebrated January 1. A good number of stubborn French, however, refused to accept the new date and continued to celebrate New Year's Day on April 1. And those who did started making fun of them and started sending them on fool's errands. This became a tradition in course of time, long after the world came to accept the Gregorian calendar.
Another interesting story traces All Fool's day back to Roman Saturnalia, when slaves were granted temporary equality with their masters. Those who claim a more Biblical origin say that it is associated with the Feast of Asses when the preacher impersonated the Hebrew prophets while arguing for the divinity of Christ. This sermon evolved into a drama, including actors and a procession, which incorporated the riding of an ass into the church. This religious affair turned into a day marked by revelry and some churches even banned it for "licentious behaviour of the congregation"!
But a more romantic reading of the day links it to the nature of the season of spring. This is the season when Mother Nature fools the human race with sudden and fickle changes in the weather — showers now and sunshine now. A seasonal rhyme goes thus:
Small April sobbed,
I'm going to cry
Please give me a cloud to wipe my eye.
Then April Fool, she laughed instead,
And smiled a rainbow overhead.
The style of April Fool's pranks has changed over the years. It's today a more media-driven foolery. On the Net you even find "the top 100" All Fool's Day pranks. Among them is one by a supermarket about carrots that are genetically modified to whistle when cooked, which drew a virtual stampede to buy them. And when the New York Graphic announced in 1878 that Edison had invented a machine that could transform soil directly into cereal and water directly into wine, there was no shortage of takers. There have been some not-so-funny ones too such as the prediction of the end of the world by a prestigious institute, sending waves of panic.
All cultures, perhaps, mark a day or a period when the line between what's permissible and what's not fades — a time when it's all right to let loose the monkey caged inside every man. Interestingly, one can trace a thematic link between All Fool's Day and Boore Habba celebrated in some Malnad villages.
On this day, which falls one day before the Naraka Chaturdarshi, everyone is allowed small pranks and even thievery, as long as they are on small measure and don't do serious harm. So, it was not uncommon to find the hot water cauldron itself missing when you got up at the crack of dawn in the morning for the ritual bath on Naraka Chaturdashi. A similar free-for-all spirit defines festival like Holi or Kamana Habba too.
It's equally interesting that fools are even seen as wise men and philosophers in cultures across the world — be it Hollywood's Forrest Gump, Hade Venkata of U.R. Ananthamurthy's short story Suryana Kudure, the fools in Shakespeare's plays. These so-called fools carry with them a philosophical understanding of life that eludes the intelligent and the normal.
Now, descending to the more mundane, Bangaloreans have reason to feel a little more foolish than usual this All Fool's Day. The Karnataka Government, which had promised that the helmet rule would be implemented, has again put it on the backburner. Now, one wonders who's fooling whom and how many times over.
B.S.
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