When I Imagine Colours

My life is a canvas on which God has painted generously. Looking at my life closely would somewhat be like looking through a prism, where one beam of white light disperses into the colours of the rainbow. Yes, that many colours have sparkled through my ordinary life and made it an extraordinary blessed journey.

Since the time I can remember, my life has been endowed with magic and wonder. The only daughter in my extended family for 15 years, I wore rose coloured glasses for the longest time. It was a fantasy land where I woke up every day with the sound of the tanpura playing in the courtyard and spent after-school hours admiring myself in ghunghroos or engaging in Riyaz. My good performances in school were rewarded with an extra hour of play or piggyback rides with my father. Growing up, I saw all shades of life, but my childhood remains the ultimate rainbow I keep going back to in my mind.

When working, I wake up before the yellow golden hue of the dawning sun spreads over the fields, so that I can drink in the bright gold love of the universe before everyone. When in front of the lens, I sink into the black chaos and cross the obscure line of identity to be someone else. My heart is a deep shade of red, brimming and palpitating with love for my close friends and family. Each moment spent with my close ones is splashed with a generous stroke of the red of love. I have my green moments of envy too; when I see the toothless smile of a baby or the wonder filled eyes of children, their pure innocence creates a blue melancholy in some hidden corner of my heart. When I delve into the pages of an ancient book I love, I am the colour of Rust, wishing to dissolve into the brown scent of the withered pages and turn into a fictional character. When I wear my favourite dress and look into a mirror, I feel pink, like a rose blooming in sunshine, aware of its beauty, yet humble in the knowledge that it’s created for a purpose. When I sit in a corner with a melancholic poem on a rainy evening, the world inside me is Gray, heavy with thoughts I would rather tuck away in a forgotten corner of my soul

But my prism moment is when I am on a stage, poised, like a lull before the storm, awaiting to burst into the seven colours of the rainbow any moment. That is THE moment, when all the colours amalgamate into one pure colour, the colour of bliss. When dancing away in pure ecstasy, I know I am one with Him: the Nataraja, my Shiva. The orange hue of the sun setting over an ocean while I play with the sand on a shore gives me a tint of colour and wanderlust. I dream of travelling to the pale deserts and the bright plains, to the dark forests and the pretty romantic cities. I dream with a purple abandon, conspicuously separated from the dull colours of the mundane. What would the colour of happiness be? I think it would be a little of this and a little of that, a full palette, ready to splatter any minute, just like my life, a different shade every day, yet reflecting the shimmering experience of every colour experienced for eternity. I would want to be white; to be able to absorb all the goodness. I would want to be black to swallow the emptiness around. I would want to be violet to spread happiness around. I would want to be golden to paint the sky. But my favourite colour is the colour of love and I hope my entire life is painted in light shades of love like a picture of a thousand sunsets or a thousand growing lilacs. Finally, there is nothing I want more than to spread a little colour around into the world.