New Delhi: While Holi was marked with fervour across Uttarakhand on Wednesday, some villages in the Kumaon region stayed away from the festival of colours in fear of “wrath” of the local deities, news agency PTI reported.
According to the PTI report, twelve villages of the Talla Johar area in Munsiyari sub division of Pithoragarh district never celebrate Holi as they do not want to dirty “God’s own mountains” and evoke the wrath of the deities.
These villages in the hill state include Harkat, Matena, Papri, Paikuti, Barnia, Ring, Chulkot, Hokra, Manik, Gola, Jarthi and Khoyam, said Pooran Pandey, a social worker in Munsiyari.
According to the villagers, their ancestors used to celebrate the festival around 100 years back just as the rest of the Kumaon region. But whenever the villagers came out to play with colours, something indicating divine disapproval of the festival took place.
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As per the locals, once while the villagers were playing Holi, two snakes engaged in a fight in the temple campus of local deity Bharati Sain. Even in the subsequent years, something or the other was witnessed in temples of local deities which set people thinking, the villagers said.
According to an elderly resident Harkot village, Khushal Singh Harkotia, the locals believe that the deities do not like the colours and were reacting in some strange way to show their disapproval.
“Villagers living outside the villages celebrate the festival when they are at their places of work or go to visit a relative elsewhere but when they are back in their own villages they do not even put a tika on their foreheads,” Singh said.
Locals also believe that tragedy befalls anyone who tries to celebrate the festival of Holi in these Kumaon villages.