THE DAILY WRITE
Blue is My Colour.
Always has been. Always will be.
June 6th: What’s your favourite colour? Why, and how is it represented in your life?
Ever since I can remember I have loved the colour blue. Growing up in a creative environment, I was always encouraged to draw and paint. My most vivid associations with blue were in water colour paints — Prussian, Cobalt, Cerulean, Indigo, Ultramarine and French Ultramarine.
For a 4 or 5 years old child, I did not understand what any of these words meant, but I knew what they stood for. Beautiful blue skies and calm seas, stormy nights and blue jeans — I painted them all and more.
Blue is love.
My parents were in advertising at the time, and I chanced upon the word universe at mum’s office. I knew what it meant, yet my six-year-old self always spelt it — Univers. Not because I was dyslexic, but because Univers was a popular typeface used in the 90s. Someone had kindly explained the word but forgot to tell me how to spell it correctly. My mother still has an all-blue card I made for her that said, “I love you more than the whole Univers!”
She’s never going to throw that one away.
By the time I was in boarding school, my love for blue grew stronger. I was in Padmini — the blue house. Our unofficial mascot was a Blue Devil, and our most popular cheer was — Blue Devils! Blue Devils! Go! It was repeated with a fervour one can possibly equate with madness.
Blue is part of my identity.
This one time, I was out shopping with my mother. We were looking for some clothes for school, for me to wear on Sundays. Everything I picked was blue and all I heard was, “You already have so many blue clothes. Why don’t you try some other colours?” My mother was hell-bent on making me explore colour and, at the time, probably could not believe that I had chosen my forever colour.
I was a cheeky 12-year-old and told her, “Blue is to me as white is to you. You have so many white clothes, why don’t you wear more colours?” Naturally, this was surprising and not what she expected to hear. But she was raising an independent thinker, a confident girl who would not be a doormat, so she laughed and gave in.
Blue is euphoria.
My teens were spent being dull and subdued. I wore browns, greys and black. With low to no interest in bright colours, it was a dark phase for me. Blue came to the rescue once again when I started studying psychology and started thinking about what getting the blues or feeling blue really meant to me? I realised that my association with blue was calm and happy. There was nothing sad about it, and I found it was a rather versatile colour.
I have seen people put blue in an icebox; they consider it cold and lifeless. But I find it tranquil, joyful, loving, spiritual and eternal.
Blue is me when I’m happy because, to understand happiness, you must experience sadness — like we saw in the animated movie Inside Out. Blue is representative of my emotions that change like tidal waves. It is also my personality — calm on the outside and stormy on the inside.
Today, my associations with blue have grown to recognise Twitter Blue and Facebook Blue, Ford Blue and IBM Blue, Yale Blue and Tottenham Navy, Tiffany Blue, Munsell Blue and many others.
Which shades or hues of blue do you like?
Key Message: There is so much life in the colour blue, and I wish everyone could see it.
