Missing Yellow!

A bunch of fiery red geraniums..
A bowl of 'fiery' green chilies..
A palate of blue sky against the lofty hillls..
All I am missing is a little yellow!

I guess the above lines need a little improvisation. Since I am in Naini and I can't shake off the memories of my schooling days here, I decide to re-compose the above stanzas using the exact names of the colors that I learnt in my art lessons

A bunch of vermilion(not crimson) red geraniums..
A bowl of verdian green chilies shining in the sun..
A palate of cobalt blue sky
All I wanted is a chrome yellow!

Back in school, I hated the snobbery of having all these names for colors, and I never knew when I grew into the snob who liked to showoff by using these specific names for them. How pretentious!

So actually its not the 'yellow' that I am missing but the humility.
The Indian society is blessed with just too many people who think they know too much. They have an auto reflex to take to the pedestal and begin preaching any moment. The preachings encompass everything, right from your personal life, professional choices and the mass favorite social diktat.
Everyone has strong views on what is best for you regardless of what you might think. These people can be found everywhere, they are there on the television  newspapers, going viral on social media and exactly where there is a little sun by the turn of the road waiting for you to come by.
A clash of ideas and choices is obvious since everyone has a different way of thinking, different backgrounds, and different life experiences. However sometimes it gets a little difficult to be all rational and ignore the rants and stand tall like the hills against the sun and the rain..
These are the times when you just have 'to peace out!'

I had to wait for the spring, but I did find my dash of yellow!

Fall Glory..

Fall.. Leaves..Colors..

I tried to look at this V section,  like an ice-cream cone, the 'V' of the heart..

Just fell and flew through..

Yellow streetlight, yellow leaves..
Yellow lights filtering from window panes..
And everything around..
Yeah, it was all Yellow..

Gray..

This is one quote that I read way back in school perhaps it was class 8 or a class or two earlier. A fellow batch mate had used the following quote in one of her Hindi essays or may be some magazine write up. A little fuzzy about the exact source, and the exact words but this is what I remember:
“Roshni ne digh-bhramit  jitna kiya, kya kabhi andheroon ne utna kiya?
Raah ho sandesh kuch aise mile.. aaj tak bhatakte hai kafile..

It is strange how the light of affluence, money, and power leads men more astray than the dark drudgery of poverty and deprivation. Although the latter also leads men to do deplorable things, it’s the intoxication of light that is more potent in blinding people towards the right way.
Again sometimes we are able to see things more clearly when the lights go out. When we are in a corner by  ourselves, it is then that the friends we make, our relationships, the good  & the bad we do everything reveals itself , which the light outside had concealed so far.

It is perhaps the irony of these lines that has stayed with me over the years. We always give light a positive connotation. It is symbolic of everything that is upright in the world.  It is symbolic of hope, of inspiration, of courage, of a well-fought fight, and of numerous other metaphors that poets and novels need to create meaningful quotes in their tomes of literature.  Then again  I read the following lines in one of the plays written by Tagore that again made me look at darkness in a new light.

“How small is this earth and confined, watched and followed by the persistent horizons. The trees, houses, and crowd of things are pressing upon my eyes. The light, like a cage, has shut out the dark eternity; and the hours hop and cry within its barriers, like prisoned birds. But why are these noisy men rushing on, and for what purpose? They seem always afraid of missing something, the something that never comes to their hands.”

The image of darkness as that of infinite freedom and the light as the martinet struck a chord somewhere. Without taking a philosophical viewpoint,  I just thought of how the restful night looks like a little freedom after running the errands of the day. The light did seem as the hard taskmaster who walks around with a schedule and a watch in hand, and we run always afraid of missing something..

Somehow it is thoughts like this that make the boundaries of black and white fade into a little shade of gray. I have not really been able to keep my sides on a number of issues that confront us in life. It would be a lot easier if we could call out the dark from the light.  However the confrontations continue and the blurred gray is all I see on a second look..
The above image does justice to my argument with its somewhat gray/grey treatment. Interestingly the word gray/grey again has a different acceptable spelling depending on where you are in the English speaking world. So i wonder who really gets the last laugh the black, the white(light) or the capricious gray/grey!!

creative input: srk

Mere Color



Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.~Oscar Wilde