Adding more color to our lives

Did you know how lucky you are compared to your dog? You can see color.He can’t. You can express your creativity through multiple colors.Mr. Dog has to be content with a dog’s life. Till a few years, Mr. Dog could at least claim proudly that his master enjoyed no advantage in viewing photos and television. But not for long! Technological barriers were overcome to enable us to capture our memories in color and bring color to our living room. Color is also said to represent our personalities and we can communicate who we are through the colors we choose to represent us. But in spite of color playing such an important role in our life, I wonder why we somehow seem to associate dignity with lack of color. Mr. Portly Bulldog smiles smugly to himself. Wait a minute! Can a bull dog smile? I never asked one.

My reverie on smiling bulldogs was broken by the appearance of a saffron-robed figure whose neither age nor gender I could guess. It introduced itself as the ghost of the Diwali past. In case you wonder what nonsense I am blabbering about out of the blue, I would recommend you look up a book by a 19th Century English Gentleman by name Charles Dickens. This thing is my imagination’s Indianized representation of a character from his book ‘Christmas Carol’. Well getting back to the point, it took me back to a good old black and white flash back scene from my life. There stood a little boy with uncombed hair and a dripping nose. A pretty young woman with a stern face stood facing him. The boy held socks of 2 different colors in his hands. The smart reader that you are, you are probably chuckling to yourself on having caught my goof up. How could I see colors in a black and white scene? Not so fast, my dear friend! I did not see the colors as such. They appeared as different shades of black by which I could guess they were different colors. I am sure you would know what I mean if you have seen some of those old black and white movies. Satisfied? I stood there invisibly and listened to their conversation.

“Amma, may I wear these socks ?”
“No. You may not. Both socks need to be of the same color.”
“Why, Ma? I think it looks nicer and more colorful this way.”
“No. Only a clown wears socks of different color on his two feet. And I don’t want a clown for a son.”

That was my first realization that too much of color is not such a good thing after all.

The Ghost of the Diwali Past then took me on a roller coaster ride through the next few years – my school days. The little boy in the first scene kept running as he kept growing bigger and bigger. The entire school days were a saga of dual color tyranny. As the schools changed, the color of the uniforms changed, but the number of colors always remained the same – two! First it was white and khaki, then light and dark blue, then cream and dark green, then white and grey, then again light and dark blue and finally white and dark green. At least uniform colors changed, but the damn shoe had to be black all the time. Why not a green or red shoe? By the way, now that I am deep into the topic, I would request the reader to not interrupt my flow of thought by asking irrelevant questions on how I was seeing all these colors in the black and white flash back scenes. You don’t put these logic questions to our Bollywood directors. Why only me? At this point, I would request the reader to kindly give leave to the ghost to return and rest peacefully in the graveyard and move on. It was not just the uniform. The tyranny ran much deeper. When I say deeper, do not let your imagination literally run wild and start thinking of vest and briefs. That’s not what I mean. I am talking here from a figurative sense. The teacher would write on the black board with white chalk. We had to copy notes on a white notebook with a black pencil. The tyranny of duality was not just outside but we were being thoroughly indoctrinated to think in terms of dualities, the good boy and the bad boy, the studious student and the stupid student, the front benchers and the back benchers. Finally after 14 years, when I went to college I was at last free to choose my own colors. But the freedom was restricted to the color of my clothes alone. In my mind I was still bound by dualities. At the end of my schooling, after 2 years of hard toil, I ended up defining my identity not through colors but through a duality – IITian and non IITian.

As the years progressed and we moved from black and white times to color times, the duality only kept getting more and more. My entry into the corporate world took me right back to the school days of uniforms. Only now it was called by the glorified name of ‘Corporate dressing etiquette’. Sounds quite a mouthful, eh? Usually a young man starting on his job dreams of quickly rising up the ranks. If asked why, he would say more money, more power. On probing deeper, one might possibly mention more freedom. But nothing can be further from the truth. As one climbs up the corporate ladder, one only tends to lose more and more of one’s freedom. If you are of sadistic mindset you can take pleasure in the fact that you also gain more power to restrict other’s freedom. And as far as color goes, one can gauge the seniority of a person by how few colors he allows himself. If you see a man in light shirt, dark suits and trousers, black shoes and a black suitcase, you can be sure he belongs to the senior management. I sometimes wonder if these guys are as colorless in their decision making as they are in their attire.

Talking of suits, if one were to mention an unconventional suit color, one can be sure of an unflattering comparison to film star Govinda. Still the same old story of my mother‘s comparison of my choice of socks to that of a circus clown. As in school, one can see this singular scorn of colors not just in the choice of attire. All your business applications have to be in grey. Whoever has the audacity to design a pink or green screen? I wonder about the utility of a 24 bit high definition color screen in offices. A monochrome screen could have very well served the purpose. It is once again the same story when you make your power point presentations. Too much of color is not considered a CXO grade presentation. Probably too colorful presentations would give these sad men living in their dual colored world an inferiority complex.

Business is by no means the only sphere of life that seems to abhor color. Religion goes a step further and imposes a single color on its higher echelons. But religious leaders can at least justify the lack of colors claiming renunciation of colors symbolic of renunciation of the world. But politicians definitely can make no such claims. Unless of course one is living in a Plato’s imaginary republic ruled by philosopher kings. Whereas western politicians dress up is dual color like corporate honchos, the ‘simple’ Indian law maker favors only white for his clothing, reserving black for his monetary possessions. Men of science in their white coats are again not too colorful either.

So what are we doing? What is so undignified about being colorful? Isn’t nature dignified in its replescendent colors? Why are we shunning colors like this? The only reason I can think of is to give a level playing field to our old friend Mr. Dog we met earlier on. A really noble socialistic objective indeed! We give a preschool kid colorful crayons and ask him to express himself freely on the walls of the house. Why can’t we give ourselves the same freedom as we grow up to express ourselves to our heart’s content in all spheres of life?


14 comments:

Moonbeam said...

at once humourous...yet at the same time, such deep thoughts. powerful observations, wonderful conclusion! enjoyed reading this one :)

dvirada said...

Hey!This post captures a hue of your nostalgic repast. Loved reading it after quite sometime now. You have brought out very profound observations concealed beneath your humor and compounded with a strong conclusion.
This post is very close to my heart as colors form an integrated part of my life. Anything associated with me has to echo resplendance. This started off with me having the audacity to write my notes in blue,red,green,black and purple pens in my engineering days. Though my dear friends never missed an opportunity to tease me to death about this, it earned me some praise from my profs who found my notes 'Well Maintained':) I have preserved all my notes and records hitherto.
Reread your post and want to do it again. Loved that part where you had the convo abt socks with your mom. It spells out innocence and budding creativity at an young age.
Thanks for making me nostalgic abt Christmas carol and for giving me the bliss of walking down the vibrant memory lane of my college days!

shail said...

Agree with Sumana, deep and yet tickles the funny bone.
"Indian law maker favors only white for his clothing, reserving black for his monetary possessions." Loved that tongue in cheek observation.

Good luck with the contest :)

T F Carthick said...

Thanks a lot, Sumana and Shail. Glad that you liked the post.

Thanks Shweta. I am glad I was able to take you back to your college memories.

s said...

Enjoyable post there! It did gift me some colorful nostalgic moments :) Like when I decorated my Workspace in Office in all the colors of the world only to invite malicious stares from the boring two legged blackboards and whiteboards around me!! Lol...

Wonderful read and a very thoughtful question at the end!

Sairam said...

Good post. Humorous and observational

I didn't know that dogs cant see in color. Damn! I missed it :)

But the best was the duality of IITian-non IITian (I suffered from it too )

and the politician's duality.

Good post. All the best.

T F Carthick said...

Thanks a lot, Shilpa. Good to see your still following my blog. Your work place must have been interesting to look at.

Thanks, Sairam. Welcome to my blog. Dogs are supposed to be color blind.

Karthik said...

Lol at colourful socks! :D I like that.
Excellent article, man. Speaks volumes. No matter where we are, what we are, there will always be comparisons. That's despicable.
The last paragraph is too good. Very thought provoking indeed.

Someone is Special said...

aww. TF, yet another humorous and informative post form your pen. Glad to have you back.. Good luck for the contest.. and will my life be colourful ?

Someone is Special

T F Carthick said...

Thanks, Karthik. The socks thingy was one of my earliest memories. Comaprisons do make life miserable.

Thanks, SIS. Again I already read your post but was too lazy to login and comment.

Barkha Dhar said...

That's an interesting perspective. I like the way you've compared your life with your acquaintance with colors. For a moment, I was there with you. Cool!

T F Carthick said...

Thanks a lot, Barkha.

Words Kraft said...

Yes..Somehow the color Black has always been symbolic to something 'Not as good as...' BTW , if it helps...I love wearing Black T-Shirts :D

T F Carthick said...

Hm..I was not so fond of black

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