When Five Minutes Turned Into Thirty: My Unexpected Holi Trip | by Ashish Kashyap | Aug, 2025

A college Holi celebration, a plate of chicken and rice, and a surprise encounter with time distortion.

Disclosure: This story was originally written by me in Hindi and translated into English with the assistance of an AI tool.

Normally, my pressure cooker takes just five minutes to make rice. But that day was different — about thirty minutes seemed to pass, yet not a single whistle sounded. I had set the time perfectly at sharp 2:00 pm. I thought maybe the cooker was faulty or there was a gas leak. I went to check — everything was fine. Then I looked at the clock… and was stunned — it was only 2:02 pm! I could have sworn half an hour had gone by.

This happened back in my college days, on Holi. After cooking chicken, I was making rice when a friend offered me bhang (marijuana). I thought it hadn’t affected me at all. In reality, I was completely under its spell — totally off the grid.

That day, I devoured chicken and rice like a wild animal, then collapsed into bed. A little while later, I felt a strange vibration in my chest and throat, followed by the sound of my own snoring. I was experiencing something I had never felt in my life before — as if I were outside my own body. How could anyone actually see themselves snoring? But I swear on my life, I saw it. My mind was blank, yet I could clearly watch myself lying there, eyes closed, snoring away. A flicker of fear ran through me, but then an inner voice whispered: “Ashish, everything will be fine.”

Since that day, I’ve never even thought about touching marijuana again.