I have no idea why, but my stray thoughts turned to colours this week. This is what happens when you commit yourself to writing at least one blog a week. You post your piece on a Sunday and put your feet up, telling yourself like Little Jack Horner, ‘What a good boy am I!’ Feeling rather smug, you suddenly discover that Wednesday has segued into Thursday and you are still an idea short for the coming Sunday’s offering. Desperation time. Your mind races and goes into overdrive. You are not given to writing trenchant pieces on the shenanigans of politicians the world over; there are éminence grises who do that on a dime. You have paid obeisance to our cricketing heroes’ recent exploits in Old Blighty, you keep dredging stuff from the Bank of Nostalgia and even that cupboard is beginning to look bare. So, what happens? Nail biting happens.
Out of nowhere, in a random, stream of consciousness moment, a bolt of lightning strikes as I climb out of my bathtub (shower actually), and prance about the flat shouting, ‘Colours!’ Not unlike Archimedes during his ‘Eureka!’ moment when the water was being displaced from his tub. Only I had the good sense even in my excitement, unlike the Greek physicist and mathematician, to wrap a towel round my waist. The domestic staff and my good wife were not best pleased as the dripping water around the floors had to be mopped up, but that is a small price to pay when creativity is straining at the leash seeking an outlet. In that logical concatenation of thought (I am on a roll here), I started writing about colours.
What was it about colours that jerked me into a frenetic bout of action? Frenetic only because it was Thursday and I had to apply some elbow grease and seriously get down to it. My thoughts turned to the fact that while colours are what they are in the sense that somebody decided to call yellow yellow, blue blue, green green, black black, red red and so on, over time these and many other colours have come to be known for other human characteristics. I am not sure how or why, but it is what it is. I was soon humming that old Nina & Frederik hit, Counting Colours in the Rainbow and put my nose to the grindstone. The idea was to take each colour and get into some elaboration as to where I am going with this trend of thought.
Let us start with yellow. Can you actually describe yellow, as you might describe the waves on a seashore or trees swaying gently in a breeze? You cannot because it is a name given by somebody to denote a certain colour. You can imagine yellow dandelions and daffodils, yellow capsicums, yellow mustard and so on. As an aside, can anyone recall the movie The Yellow Rolls Royce? However, we get into interesting territory when you begin to attribute the colour to human characteristics. Or foibles. Ergo, yellow journalism. Yellow is equated with cowardice. Why? Search me. I could research this and come up with some academic balderdash, but that will only ruin my piece. All I know is when I first heard ‘You yellow-livered chicken,’ in some cowboy film before John Wayne pumps six bullets into the baddy, it became standard lingua franca for us school kids. In more recent times, Tin Tin fans will recall lines like ‘You yellow-bellied, lily-livered sea slugs!’ Not to forget the Americans pejoratively referring to the Orientals as ‘the yellow man’ during the Vietnam conflict. Check out the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. That is how, unfortunately for our bright, cheery yellow, the colour has gained dubious notoriety. That said, I would much rather sing Donovan’s gentle and melodic tribute, Mellow Yellow or better still, sail away with The Beatles on their Yellow Submarine.
Moving on to blue, we are overcome with joy as we think of blue skies (when dark clouds don’t gather to ruin it for us), deep blue sea or river (think Blue Danube), blue hydrangeas and delphiniums, blue blood flowing in royal veins (just for a giggle), our cricketing Boys in Blue and so much more. That said, how do we go about treating blue in normal, everyday parlance? Cavalierly. ‘The Chairman of the Board went blue in the face as soon as he saw the company’s disastrous profit & loss account and balance sheet.’ ‘She is feeling blue. Her pet dog just died.’ ‘You come to visit me once in a blue moon and you call yourself my son?’ ‘These blue-collar workers are getting my goat with their demands.’ I hearken to Neil Diamond’s Song Sung Blue when he croons, ‘Funny thing, but you can sing it with a cry in your voice.’ Or wallow in Joni Mitchell’s achingly beautiful Blue.
What about red then? We are conditioned to think of red in somewhat angry, even negative terms. In the old days, if you arrived late to school or for work, the attendance register (jealously guarded by the receptionist) will mark a red cross against your name. If you collected three red crosses in a month, you were docked a day’s pay. And speaking of red cross or Red Cross, the name exudes only positive vibes in their never-ending quest to heal the sick and the lame. We swoon over the red rose, an everlasting symbol of true love, we love our red wine, we see red if greatly incensed, we fear for the safety of Little Red Riding Hood against the all-devouring big, bad wolf, communists over the ages have been branded as Reds (I know not why), you could come to grief if you are caught red-handed with your hand in the proverbial cookie jar, it would be a red-letter day if you discovered a cure for the common cold and you would almost certainly receive red-carpet treatment for having done so. Finally, the craze for being a red head goes back to Elizabeth I down to Lucille Ball in the 20th century among several others. If the former, known also as The Virgin Queen took a dislike to you, your head might be presented to Her Majesty on a silver platter marinating in a pool of red blood. If you survive, you can always paint the town red and seek out The Lady in Red, immortalised in song by Chris de Burgh.
‘Green is good for you,’ in the opinion of most doctors. Leafy green vegetables in particular – most of us, from the time we were kids, hated the sight of spinach (notwithstanding sailor Popeye’s blandishments), lady’s fingers, cabbage, sprouts (Brussels or any other), bitter gourd, snake gourd and all manner of greenies. Where’s the potatoes? An old wives’ tale has it that anything grown below the ground is bad for health, the reverse is true for things that flourish above the ground, where we can see them. On arriving at man’s or woman’s estate, we reluctantly came to tolerate the green stuff, if not exactly making a beeline for them at a buffet service. If you ignore the culinary aspect of greens, there is much to recommend this colour, barring Pakistan’s cricketers in green.
Tom Jones went all misty-eyed as he belted out his all-time hit, Green, Green Grass of Home. If you are into sports, what could be more appealing than the emerald carpet lawns at Wimbledon or the manicured outfield at Lord’s or Eden Gardens. The only time we cricket lovers from India may abhor too much grass is if it is found in profusion on the actual playing surface. Judging by recent results, even that seems kosher for our doughty lads whose brilliance awakened the green-eyed monster at the spiritual home of cricket. Seriously though, we humans need plants, trees, lawns and gardens aplenty; we could do with all the anti-oxidant chlorophyll which is coming under great threat from frighteningly rapid urbanisation. Go Green, as the slogan goes.
After going through some primary colours, I shall conclude this rambling with some thoughts on black and white. It is a curious fact that when it comes to the cinema, black and white are seen as distinct from colour, suggesting that black and white are not colours at all. Monochrome, if you want to be technical. Be that as it may, another unfortunate fact we have to contend with is that black is viewed as dark and villainous, while white is embraced as virtue and goodness. From a worldwide perspective, there are some interesting contradictions here. In archaic speak, an honest man was often described as being white, while villains were often defined as black-hearted. The official dress for mourning in western countries is black, whereas here in India, white is the attire of choice.
Racism is the ugliest reflection of the black vs white conundrum, mainly in the occidental west. Much water has flown over the decades but Black Lives Matter is still a rallying point for the mixed races. Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa hit the bull’s eye when he coined the moniker, Rainbow Nation after the apartheid era in the 1990s. Since I resorted to popular songs to buttress my argument across colours, I shall end with a song that two superstars, Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney composed and duetted; Ebony and Ivory, representing the black and white keys of a piano was their clever, if clearly idiomatic choice of instrument. The opening lines speak for themselves. Ebony and Ivory / Live together in perfect harmony / Side by side on my piano, keyboard / O Lord, why don’t we?
Good question.
Suresh's Corner 
Excellent piece, Suresh!
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