Tuesday, October 31, 2006

All about the eve

Today is the day before the night that is Halloween. It is, as I said yesterday, one of my favourite festivals. One that I take seriously, for some strange reason. Or maybe it is that my memories of Halloween have always been coloured bright and happy, never mind that ghoulies and ghosties are out that night with spooks to spare wandering about in their wake. Somehow, for me, these have always been upbeat spirits, cheerful even as they yelled “BOO!” down the back of my neck and caused shivers to wiggle up and down my spine.

The first I remember of Halloween was when we lived in a small town in Germany. Our neighbours, a wonderfully mad American family who later became mine when I was in college in the USA, had three small children, with whom I was sent out. I was Pippi Longstocking, a favourite then, complete with tight braids and a short skirt. It was cold, and wet – which then became a recurring theme for Halloween ever after. We rang bells through the US army camp in the city and collected all sorts of candy, little of which I ate because I got the mumps soon after. But the outing meant that I could stay up late with my little friends, be outside in the dark and indulge in these minor pleasures that are such forbidden fruit at a time when you are too young to do very much else for sin.

My favourite Halloween celebration was perhaps when I was in college in Boulder, Colorado. It began fairly early in the day, unfortunately with class – which was in itself quite horrific – and then segued happily into the afternoon, when the party began. I lived in the coed dorm then, and everyone was yelling and giggling in the corridors, getting ready for the big bash at the cafeteria in the evening. I had just arrived on campus and, though I knew quite a few people, I had no idea what to wear or how to go about the whole event, especially since I was grown up and less uninhibited by then. So my very new friends got together, ransacked my wardrobe and dragged out what they thought would be the perfect disguise: I was an Indian princess. Clichéd as it sounds, it worked for them and I was too fascinated by the seriousness of the whole affair to object beyond a minor squeak or three.

So when the party began, I was the front-woman. I sat with the reception committee at the front desk, stamping hands with indelible ink and displaying no more than my own fingers, the rest of me carefully pinned under a swathe of sequinned and enveloping dupatta. People had to guess who I was, and if they did, they got some sort of prize – maybe a free drink, I don’t remember. The only person who did guess was the dorm Casanova, a man who later became a good friend and cohort in many crimes, and he said it was because no one else in the place had such carefully pale-painted fingernails.

Later that evening, more conventionally and warmly clad in jeans, sweater, thick socks and boots, I was dragged out to the famous Boulder Mall Crawl. Simply explained – downtown Boulder is run through by a pedestrians-only cobbled street, called the 16th Street Mall. Come Halloween evening, and people would parade solemnly up and down that stretch several times, getting progressively happier on copious doses of beer and whatever else was on offer at the various storefronts and tailgate parties along the way. There was inevitably a layer of early snow on the ground, which soon melted into a delightfully alcoholic slush that was incredibly dirty, and by the end of the second turn, you were – at least, I was – frozen solid from my ankles down and wishing plaintively for a warm bed and lots of hot chocolate to defrost every pore.

Later that night, I sadly contemplated my feet and sighed. It may have been a fun celebration, but my red ankle boots would never recover. The next year, I went as a bat and wore more sensible waterproof shoes.

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