Holi (1985)

In a typical college in a typical Indian city, the hostel boys Madan Sharma (Aamir Khan) and his friend are a rowdy lot. The teaching staff suffer from the common apathy of most teachers in similar colleges. The administration has the usual problems, with ill-paid employees periodically going on strike. On the whole, the college is a very normal place. But on this particular day, when Madan and his friends rise from their slumber, some with the customary hangover, they are not so perturbed to find no water in the taps again, as when they hear that it is not going to be a holiday after all. Instead there will be a lecture in the auditorium by the Chairman of the Board (Dr. Shriram Lagoo), on the day of the festival of fire, Holi, and the boys decide not to attend the classes.

The hostel superintendent Professor Singh (Naseeruddin Shah), the only lecturer with some human links with the students, watches with apprehension their growing restlessness. A notice announcing a further postponement of examinations adds to the bitterness. A fight erupts out of nowhere between principal Phande's (Om Puri) nephew and another student, in which the principals nephew is hurt and the other boy is promptly rusticated. It is an unjustifiably drastic punishment, and the news spreads like wildfire. Resistance is organized in the library, in the laboratory, in the classrooms and the college grounds. In the auditorium, the first egg hits the Chairman, and pandemonium follows. To save his own job, the principal decides to track down the culprits. Professor Singh politely refuses to help. The principal now blackmails one of the hostel boys, whose father he knows, and who is in any case a loner, and a butt of jokes in the campus. Imbued with a false sense of power, the boy walks into the principals trap. A large group of boys, all from the hostel, are immediately rusticated, and asked to vacate their rooms by the morning. The boys, not all of them actually guilty of rebellion, are now all in a rage.

Holi News

1. Holi celebrations begin in Gokul
2. Why don't we have Holi songs nowadays?
3. Allahabad celebrates Holi with "Hammer procession"
4. Nation celebrates 'Holi' with gusto
5. Men in women's attire celebrate Holi in Bikaner