An eerie calm has descended on our compound here in Bandra. Gone are the youths armed with bombs, rifles and pistols. The fires have died down and the only remnants of the chaos that reigned yesterday are the odd patches of red – and blue and yellow and green.

Yesterday was Holi – a national holiday marked by bonfires, soaking friends with water and throwing coloured dye at them.

For the past week the tension has been building as gangs of six-year-olds carrying enormous water pistols and water balloons stalked our apartment buildings looking for victims to soak. As a Westerner I had a sort of tacit immunity from attack and the armed youngsters would lower their weapons as I passed like some Swiss envoy.

Despite this I was never sure how long my diplomatic status would last or if it would be respected by all the factions in the neighbourhood. Getting out of a rickshaw with a load of groceries was when I was most nervous as I had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

The day itself we ventured out late: well after the local kids had exhausted their supplies of powdered dye and we felt relatively safe from attack. I was, however, slightly concerned by my wife’s choice of attire – a crisp, clean, white T-shirt.

“You’re wearing that?” I asked.

“Mmm, hmm,” she replied, “what’s wrong with it?”

“You may as well paint a huge target on it. It’s a red rag to a bull,” I said, mangling my metaphor.

She knew what I meant but her thinking was that since she only paid the equivalent of three dollars for the shirt, and she’d worn it three times, she could afford to sacrifice it.

Looking at my five-year-old shorts I did a similar calculation, dividing the years I’d owned them by the number of times I’d worn them and came to the conclusion that the universe owed me money. Leaving it at that we jumped in a rickshaw for Juhu Beach, which was the place to be, apparently.

From the number of times we asked him to slow down so we could photograph another group of people covered in dye, our rickshaw driver obviously figured we wanted a piece of the action and we soon ended up in a narrow back street teeming with people throwing water and dye at each other. The busiest store in the street was the bottle shop and I realised I was no longer dealing with six-year-olds in my building, but tanked up adults looking for fresh victims.

My diplomatic immunity had expired.

I only just managed to get may camera under my backpack before the first water balloon burst on my leg. At the same time my wife let out a blood-curdling scream as another burst on the side of the rickshaw next to her. It was like the closing scene from The Gauntlet where Clint Eastwood drives the bus through the street lined with cops shooting at him. Except I wasn’t Dirty Harry and I wasn’t in a bus.

Luckily the rickshaw driver wasn’t keen on getting a soaking either and sped up to get the hell out.

Down at the beach it seemed that every person in north Bombay was there. Half of them were on the sand throwing dye at each other, while the other half were in the water washing it off, staining the ocean vivid colours. It was an almost perfect arrangement on a hot spring day – get soaked by water pistols, covered in dye then jump in the ocean to clean off and cool down.

As the day wore on the crowd continued to grow until the beach was a seething mass of multi-coloured humanity. The ocean resembled an artist’s palate with all the paints mixed together and the sand was packed with everyone from groups of young men in black singlets and sunglasses looking to pick up to families where mum, dad, every kid and the pet dog were covered head to toe (or paw) in dye.

For us it was time to retreat to a bar overlooking the beach where we could watch the organised chaos from a shady seat with a cold beer. Around us sat other refugees from the mayhem below. As they ate lunch their children would occasionally appear, lay down their water pistols and have a quick bite to eat and a sip of soft drink before heading back into the mêlée.

Eventually it was time to leave the battlefield and return to the compound, where the watchmen were once again safe from aquatic attack and I could get out of a rickshaw without having to check that I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt that I was happy to sacrifice.