Let's look at the moments from Bollywood box office that highlight this festival and cultural insignia through pop-culture, which after Diwali, happens to be India's biggest, and most widely celebrated. Interestingly both festivals are rooted in Uttar Pradesh. If Diwali is Ram's return to Ayodhya after the war, Holi is rooted in Braj and Vrindavan-Mathura, which is the birthplace of Krishan. Braj is also in the Uttar Pradesh. The other states where Holi is huge is on the other side of the Ganga in Bihar, in Madhya Pradesh, in Rajasthan, parts of Punjab, and Gujarat (which is where Dwarka, the other city associated with Krishn is). India's famous group dance, the Dandiya out of Gujarat is also linked to Holi. In South India, Holi is celebrated, though not in high intensity as some of the other festivals like Pongal, so we do not see much famous Holi moments in Tamil films for example as we do below. Interestingly as Holi is strongly linked to Uttar Pradesh, so it is not surprising that another individual linked to UP, their 'Chora Ganga Kinare Wala' Amitabh Bachchan, was in a number of famous Holi songs also over the years. Though significance and presence of Holi overall precedes and exceeds these films by generations and contexts (from old myths to modern pop-culture) across India, the box office tale can be distilled and highlighted as follows:

Mother India (1957) - It starred Rajendra Kumar-Sunil Dutt (Sanjay Dutt's father) and Nargis (Sanjay Dutt's mother, who was a muslim woman incidentally). Nominated for Oscars in 1958 and a blockbuster at the box office, it remains one of India's top 3 hits of all time even today. Mother India has a rural holi song, "Holi aaye re Kanhayee". Collecting Rs 3 crores when perhaps ticket prices were not even 75 paise, Mother India was an epic hit.

Kati Patang (1970) - Featuring superstar Rajesh Khanna during the peak of his run, Kati Patang had the famous Holi song, "Aaj na chorenge, bas humjoli". Kati Patang starred Asha Parekh apart from Rajesh Khanna. And it too was a major hit, with adjusted 2010 gross of over Rs 200 crores.

Sholay (1975) - The biggest hit of all time over India has a Holi song where the then emerging superstar, Amitabh Bachchan brings out a style of dancing perhaps for the first time in the Holi town celebration in what would go onto become his signature style of dancing. The Holi moment of Sholay precedes the attack by Amjad Khan on Ramgarh. Also starring Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Jaya Bhaduri, Sanjeev Kumar. In a time when Rs. 50 lakhs was considered a decent national level collection for a movie, Sholay collected a distributor share of nearly Rs. 50 lakhs from a single theater (The Minerva) alone.

Silsila (1981) - 'Rang Barse Bheege Chunarwali', perhaps altered the context of Holi forever. The song has Amitabh Bachchan flirting with a neighbor's wife (Rekha). Silsila was perhaps the most anticpated film of 1981. It did not do as well as some of the other amitabh starrers but was nonetheless it opened huge and ended as a Silver Jubilee grosser at the box office in 1981 and its songs have remained hugely popular, even though almost 30 years have passed since its theatrical release.

Darr (1993) - 'Ang se Ang laga' in Darr put Holi in an extremist perspective where Sunny Deol and his wife Juhi Chawla get approached on Holi-day by Shahrukh Khan uninvited. Not happy with this development, Sunny Deol kills him. The film made silver jubilee and grossed behind Aankhen (Govinda starrer) and Khalnayak (Sanjay Dutt-Maduri Dixit) fare in 1993.

Mohabbatein (2000) - Here Shahrukh Khan was imagining playing holi with the 'bhoot' of Aishwarya Rai. Incidentally Aishwarya Rai, who played the 'dancing ghost' screen daughter of Amitabh on the silverscreen in Mohabbatein, later on in decade got married to Bachchan's son (Abhishek Bachchan) instead. The Bachchans, it appears have stopped playing holi thereafter on and offscreen, but introducing Uday Chopra, Jimmy Shergill, Jugal Hansraj, this Aditya Chopra film in its time was hugely hyped and expected to rewrite box office history but didn't match up. It collected business of approx 30 crores business and finished 2nd for the year.

Baghban (2003) - 'Hori Khlele Raghuveera' - Once again Amitabh and this time, the most successful star actress of all time, Hema Malini were picturized in this rustic number in the 2003 release. The movie was a silver jubilee reaching 2003 hit. The holi song though not a rage like Rang Barse, helped. Incidentally the film was not as big a hit as Silsila, but costs/expectations were also lower this time around with older stars in the lead, so the moderate distribution prices made Baghban's solid collections a 'superhit' interms of percentage returns for its distributors.

Waqt (2005) - This was a successful film of 2005 which had Akshay Kumar singing to Priyanka Chopra, "Do me a favor, let's play holi". Marking the pop-westernization of Holi. Suffice to say, it did not quite become a cult classic. But the film was successful and Akshay Kumar, who's one of few bollywood stars popular in middle India, will be starting his Holi party again in his upcoming film Action Replayy for Vipul Shah.

Many other stars like Hrithik Roshan, Shahid Kapoor, Ranbir Kapoor, Vivek Oberoi, Neil Nitin Mukesh etc have not contributed any major Holi songs so far. The audiences are looking for some new Holi songs on the big screen from other actors and filmmakers now. Box Office is evidence that when they work, they work big.