Colours spell life!
Desh Bir
The two contrary colours that we are wont to think of are black and white. The light that nature has given to us is white light and it contains in itself an amalgam of seven colours. Absence of natural light automatically scripts darkness which stands for the black color. We often talk of presenting things in black and white. We paint characters in a story with either a black brush or extol them as sparkling and speckles like snow. The man made camera used to take only black and white pictures until the colour films came.
While looking at human nature we find fault with someone or discover only virtues in someone else. This again is tantamount to looking at things in black and white. We should realize that there is no man born who is entirely evil and no paragon of virtue unblemished by faults. Any attempt to look at things with black or white glasses is only symbolic of a partial, incomplete and fragmented vision.
The truth is that nature has given some basic colours to make this world a beautiful place and then numberless combinations of those basic colours can create millions and millions of hues. Imagine for a minute an environment around where things were only either black or white. Think of a town or village without a single spec of pigment anywhere. Can we imagine for a moment what it would look like? Perhaps it would be something like the imagined hell!
In that case, there would be no butterflies as we see them today. After all why should they exist if they are either white or black alone? Their very raison d’etre is the presence of flowers which propagate plant life and for such propagation pollination bees, multi-coloured insects and butterflies were perhaps created by Mother Nature.
Just imagine for a moment a landscape of black and white flowers. Who will choose to have black flowers? When we had only black and white photography, we accepted it because there was no choice. However, painters from the earliest times used vegetable tints to paint the world of their perception and conception.
Think of the vegetable world. Think of white shoots, black shoots, white flowers, black flowers, white fruit and black fruit! Ghastly, simply ghastly would it be! Today we like Jamuns, Blackberries and Brinjals because they contrast so well with so many other options available in so many hues. Remove from the city all the posters, painted walls, signage boards, and neon-lights of several colours and we shall have no cities left as we know them. They will simply frighten us s jungles of whiteness or blackness.
Shall we ever opt for a world where birds shall appear only either like crows, ravens and cuckoos or like ducks and swans and cranes! Not even for an hour shall we choose to live in a world so black and white. The seven colors, in their innumerable combinations alone make this life what it is – fascinating, enticing , adorable and rainbow-like. Surely colours spell life like nothing else can!
(The author is a retired Principal, Govt. College, Hoshiarpur- Punjab)
