Click to play videoRajouri, J&K: A man coloured in nothing but black, a crowd wanting to be beaten up; that's not how most people mark Holi here, but this surely brings the people of Rajouri closer.
If you are wondering what this is all about, it's the way the residents of Rajouri celebrate Holi. But as the colours of Holi spread across the nation, the border town of Rajouri continues to dance to a very different beat.
A man, smeared expertly in black from head to toe, is chosen as Bhairon and regarded as a manifestation of the deity of Bhairon Nath and then he kicks off the Holi frenzy.
"Earlier, they used to paint the Bhairon in two colours — red of Hanuman and black of Bhairon. Then there was a time he used to be covered in mud. But that has now changed," Prabodh Chander Jaisial, a member of the Bhairon Yatra organising committee, explains the ritual.
Dancing in frenzy and hitting people with his metal tong is all the self-styled Bhairon Nath would do and the crowd feels blessed whenever he strikes.
"They say if you are hit by the Bharion, it saves you from several diseases," Rajouri resident Neeraj Sharma would tell you.
Sardar Khan, another resident, has a very different wish. "I wanted my kid to be hit, and then he will never feel scared," he says.
The Bhairon Yatra, which is said to have been started nearly a century back, was suspended in the late 1990s due to increasing militancy in the region. But it resumed once again around 2002.
And for this terrorism-affected area, the yatra today has become a strong symbol of communal harmony.
"The Bhairon Yatra is a symbol of communal harmony as all Hindus and Muslims take part in it. Even before Partition, both communities were a part of it," Sanjay Dutt, a member of Santham Dharma, recalls.
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