The Holi Shirt

Diya laid out her white shirt the night before Holi.

Not her old white shirt with the ketchup stain on the sleeve. Not her almost-white shirt that was really more of a grey. She chose her favorite white shirt — the one that was bright and crisp and clean as fresh snow on a mountaintop.

Her older brother Kavi walked past her room and stopped. He stared at the shirt on the bed. He stared at Diya. He stared back at the shirt.

"You know tomorrow is Holi, right?" he said. "The festival of colors? Where people throw colors at each other? Colors that don't come out?"

"Yep," said Diya.

"And you're wearing... that?"

"Yep," said Diya.

Kavi shook his head slowly and walked away muttering, "She's lost it. She's completely lost it."

But Diya had not lost it. Diya had a plan.

See, Diya loved that white shirt more than almost anything. She loved how it glowed in the sunshine. She loved how the collar folded just right. She loved the two little pockets on the front that were perfect for carrying exactly two small things.

And every single year at Holi, Diya wore old clothes. Ratty clothes. Clothes nobody cared about. Clothes that were supposed to get ruined. And every single year, Diya stood at the edge of the courtyard while her cousins ran screaming and laughing, and she thought: What if the color gets on something I actually like?

So she hung back. She threw a tiny pinch of color, carefully, from far away. She kept her arms tucked in. She worried about her shoes. She worried about her hair. And by the end of Holi, her old ratty clothes had a few small smudges of pink and yellow, and Diya felt... nothing much at all.

This year would be different.

This year, Diya was wearing the white shirt.

The morning of Holi was golden and loud. Music thumped from speakers down the street. The courtyard behind Nani's house was already alive with cousins — big ones and little ones and medium ones — all bouncing around tables covered with bowls of colored powder. Red and green and purple and orange and blue and yellow, all bright as jewels, all waiting.

Diya stepped outside in her white shirt.

Her cousin Riya gasped. "Diya! You're wearing WHITE? To HOLI?"

"That's so brave," whispered her little cousin Jem, who was four and already had green on his forehead from touching his own face.

Nani came out carrying a tray of sweets and looked Diya up and down. She didn't say anything. But the corner of her mouth turned up just a tiny, tiny bit.

Diya's heart was beating hard. The shirt was so white. So perfectly, beautifully white. A little voice in her head said: Go back inside. Change into something old. What are you doing? You're going to ruin it. You're going to RUIN it.

Diya took a deep breath.

Then she walked straight up to the biggest bowl of color on the table — the red one, red as roses, red as strawberries, red as a fire truck — and she put both hands in.

The powder was soft and silky between her fingers. She lifted her hands out, and they were completely, outrageously red.

And before she could think about it one more second, she pressed both hands right onto the front of her white shirt.

Two bright red handprints. Right over the two little pockets.

For a moment, everything was quiet. Even the music seemed to hold its breath.

Then Riya screamed — a happy scream — and grabbed a handful of yellow and ran straight at Diya. It hit her shoulder in a sunburst of gold. Jem toddled over with green powder clutched in his tiny fists and patted her knee, leaving a perfect little-kid handprint right there.

And Diya — something broke open inside her. Something that had been holding tight for a long, long time just... let go.

She grabbed orange with her left hand and purple with her right and she THREW — big, messy, joyful throws — and color went everywhere, on everyone, on everything. She got Riya right in the back. She got Kavi on top of his head. She got Uncle Dev as he walked through the gate, and he laughed so hard he had to sit down on a chair.

Diya ran and spun and slid and shouted. She didn't tuck her arms in. She didn't worry about her shoes. When her cousin Meena turned the hose on and mixed all the powder into a wild, dripping, rainbow mess, Diya ran straight through it with her arms stretched wide, and she came out the other side looking like a painting that had come to life.

The afternoon got quiet and warm. Everyone sat on the courtyard steps, wet and colorful and tired and happy. Nani passed around cups of sweet thandai, and they drank with pink and blue fingers.

Diya looked down at her shirt.

It was absolutely, completely, utterly destroyed.

It wasn't white anymore. It wasn't any one color anymore. It was every color — smeared, splashed, handprinted, streaked. There was Jem's little green handprint on her knee. There were her own two red handprints on the pockets. There was a huge bloom of purple across the back that she couldn't even see, but Riya told her it looked "like a galaxy."

Kavi sat down next to her and looked at the shirt. "You actually did it," he said.

"Yep," said Diya.

"That was your favorite shirt."

"Still is," said Diya.

And it was true. She looked at every splash and smudge and streak, and each one was a moment. The yellow sunburst was Riya running at her, laughing. The green handprint was little Jem, reaching up. The purple galaxy was the moment Meena got her from behind and Diya had spun around, shrieking with delight.

The shirt wasn't ruined. It was full.

That night, after everyone had showered three times and the courtyard had been hosed down twice and Nani had swept up enough colored powder to paint a whole house, Diya folded her shirt carefully and put it on the shelf in her room.

"You're not washing it?" asked Kavi from the doorway.

Diya shook her head. "Not yet. Maybe not ever."

Kavi looked like he wanted to say something about how that was weird, but then he just nodded. "It looks cool, actually. Like art."

Diya smiled.

She put her hand on the shirt one more time. It was stiff in some places and soft in others. It smelled like color and water and Nani's courtyard and the best day she could remember.

Next year, she already knew what she'd wear to Holi.

Something brand new. Something she absolutely loved.

Something perfectly, completely, bright white.

And she'd let the colors come.