Colors of India!

It’s been six months now that I am here in United States....far from my own country India... Hopping and halting, at a few places here, in past six months..... When asked ... do I miss India? ... I say …Hmm…yes I do... and what do I miss of India !?!... It did not even take me a second to answer the question..... I was so spontaneous when I blurted out.... saying 'the Colors of India'... Yes...I miss the colors of India ... Speaking of colors, here, I don't find life as vibrant as I found in India....

India is so colorful and rich in its taste, culture, heritage and fashion that even when you think of our festivals ... they happen to be so colorful and beautiful... We have festivals to celebrate each and every event, every natural thing one could really imagine.... like festivals for lights, kites, flowers, new harvest, food, girls, gods and deities and each unique in its own way bringing with it celebrations involving lots of hue and zest ... Well, the best of them all… is the festival of 'Rang Panchami' ... ‘Holi’…The celebration of colours on the day of ‘festival of colors’ is something that every Indian enjoys ....It just brings out so much of youthful fun ...where in seeing the cheeks smeared with 'gulal' gives such an avid temptation to give into the fun. ... Holi continues to be celebrated with great vigor as it is lively, full of masti and merry making... Countless Hindi films have brought the vibrant colors of this festival to the screen....
The much popular Holi revelry -"Are ja re hat natkhat , na chhoo re mera ghoonghat, palat ke doongi aaj aisi gali re, mujhe samjho na tum bholi bhali re" ...
"Aaya holi ka tyohar, ude rang ki bauchhar tu hai nar nakhredar matwali re, aaj meethi lage hai teri gali re" is one of my favorites among the songs of Holi exuberantly portrayed by Sandhya in 'Navrang'. This movie made long time ago .... I should say is an ultimate and an unmatchable projection of colors I have ever seen during my childhood days, on screen ... but nothing can match our Amitabh Bachchan's mischievous 'Rang Barse' and Rekha's gulal smeared naughty cheeks in ‘Silsila’... this song comes to my mind when I talk of colours.... or his latest with Hema Malini goes...'Holi Khele Raghuveera' is yet another popular item on the list of unforgettable nuances on the occasion of Holi ... As our festivals pride in the expression of color…so do our Hindi movies for instance the new ‘Devdas’.

The next in my list, is the Ganapaty Festival.... Wow!! I love to see the Ganesh idols... There are competitive exhibitions on making the Ganesh look best in every form imaginable..... I love Ganapaty as I love elephants. The festivities include fund-raising, building all kinds of innovative forms of Ganesh idols, organizing public performances of music and dance, cooking grand feasts and making a lot of noise and halla gulla...yelling and singing.....'Ganapati Bappa Morya'.... It’s like going to see Ganesh is a merry trip by its own.... It’s such a happy occasion where you know that every Ganesh pendal is going to offer you with a different prasad each time.... I love the lemon rice given as prasad most of the times... Hmm... It’s just so simple ...yet so tasty...

Then when I think of my near and dear ones .... I remember my mom's 'haldi-kumkum' events .... occasions where in she invited and still invites lots of women home to offer pan-supari and haldi-kumkum on her Lakshmi Pujans where Goddess Lakshmi is decorated and ornamented with a rich Kanjeevaram silk saree and jewelry.... It always used to be a fun ritual accompanying mom to go and choose a different color every year for her rich Kanjeeveram silk saree. My mom invariably chose maroon for almost all her sarees...and always… She has lots of sarees in maroon….Then there would come a very easy comment from Baba saying "Lata, that green isn’t good .... I think you should go for maroon..... and mom giving back immediately, saying...."Mr....Its maroon!" Baba could never make out between green and red .... I still feel he sees the sky pink!

Then I relate colours to the beautiful 'Rangolis' my mother-in-law used to put sincerely everyday at our door entrance .... with lots of enthusiasm and happiness... She then earnestly waited for Baba to comment on them and leave a remark for her creative effort. The Rangolis were just so simple, artistic and beautiful ...which spoke of her growing innovativeness each day.... And Baba himself had grown such a colorful garden out of the saplings which he picked up from nurseries, nurturing them as his own babies... He made it a point to get different colours of anthuriums, gardenias, gerberas, roses and different orchids to make our garden as colorful as possible. I remember, this had inspired me to exhibit my uniqueness where in I tried blending colorful flowers and the available colours to decorate my home during Diwali, Dasara and other festivals..... Then when I talk of 'Dasara' ... I am reminded of the colorful and lovely 'Ghaghras' of Gujrat and Rajasthan....for 'Garba and dandiya’.

Adding color to the glory …was the 'Chudi bazaar', a thriving market of Charminar. It had its own charm in presenting a different rendezvous of colours ... it surely dazzles you with its amazingly maddening collection of bangles ... the tiny shops alluring people with the world famous 'hyderabad ki chudiyan' which sell glass bangles in rainbow colours.... It’s a spectacularly sparkling view!

When I had been for my visa to Chennai …I could catch upon women who wore so much of gold jewelry….. I must say the gold gave a great contrast to their complexion and they carried it with such a superior finesse ….and I felt no color would go so well with them than the color of gold. The color of gold is gold. That's why it's called gold.

Am myself so choosy on the colors .... I make an attempt to try out choosing different colours for my own dress and clothes.... It’s like every time hunt for a different color as if there are innumerable colours to match my imagination .... Then, I go to the extent of signing them like, peach color as in peaches......the color of a ripe mango..... the orange as in orange…the unexplainable hue of dusk .... the mehndi green...then the leaf green.... the gud color.... then the ‘ananda’ color.... the blood red....the lemon yellow......the sky blue......and then I remember the color of copper sulphate salt from the chemistry experiments which gave a unique blue-green color of its own...Then there comes the color of the national bird, the peacock itself….the enigmatic ‘mor-pankhi’ from the beautiful, delightful and iridescent colors on the peacock feather are just inexpressible...then, describing white as aerial white.....and then you have these earthy colours.... of brown, beige, ash...and so on and so forth...though you have only seven known colours ...you go choosing for all the shades and tints each of them have to offer in an effort to make your selection a novelty each time... That’s a whole lot of exercise in itself...choosing colours...Its fun though... It’s even more fun to do it for others....try it!!

I had learnt the art of ‘Batik’ printing as a part of my co-curricular activity during my graduation…The tie and dye method, ‘ bandhni’ leads to the innovative mixture of creativity experimenting with colors, which I would not forget…I remember making lovely colorful ‘razais’ using different tying methods and colors. I love wearing bandhni sarees as they have such rich colors, give out a traditional touch and are royal looking.

And more over as they say…two people do not see the same rainbow and each eye sees its own rainbow… Fortunately I have seen many rainbows when in India. The white light streams down to be broken up by those human prisms into all the colors of the rainbow. Each of us has to take our own color in the pattern and be just that!

Temples of India are so colorful with all the possible forms of art, designs and sculptures that it’s always fun to visit the temples for aesthetic reasons rather than the religious reasons…. Even our weddings are so colorful.... the rituals, the ceremonies, the customs, the grandeur, the cuisine, the clothes, the singing, the dancing, the people ..... All these concepts become insipid without the essence of color in them ... the colours of spirit.... the colors of emotions... colors of joy and fun....the color of being… in all its vitality make my India…is India!

May memory restore again and again the smallest color of the smallest day: Time is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn - Socrates

-Manasi