Mumbai, March 13 : Ahead of the festival of colours on Friday, actor Pavail Gulatie took a trip down memory lane and recalled how he used to spend his 'Holi' during his childhood in New Delhi.

Pavail shared: 'My crazy Holi days were when I was young and when I was in school. In my society too, everyone used to celebrate it with water balloons, and all of it would start around 1.5 weeks before the festival.'

He said it used to be like an unsaid competition among friends in the society.

'A competition of who had the most water balloons. We'd fill the water balloons and while doing so, we'd playfully hit it at each other. It was crazy but fun - like we'd throw the balloons at somebody walking on the road, or we'd deliberately throw it on a car.'

The competition turned into a heist, he hilariously recalled.

'This balloon competition would turn into a heist - we'd all arrive at a friend's home who had made the majority water balloons, and we'd collectively destroy them, or we'd playfully steal them.'

'That time we took it so seriously that now when I think about it, I laugh at it. At that point, kids used to cry about losing the competition, or somebody stealing them and so on. But I think that those were really crazy times - I call it the Gubbara heist.'

For Pavail and other kids, the competition was more important than sleep.

'Those days and those competitions used to be more important than our sleep! It was all in Delhi when I was growing up at Sarita Vihar. My friends and I used to play cricket in the society. It was crazy. I can't stretch about it or say enough about how seriously we used to take all of it!'

/IANS