Colour Red

Red used to be my favourite colour. I have red shoes, red handbags, red skirts. Many red lipsticks. Red stone ear rings. But now I am living in China, where red is an auspicious colour and dominates the landscape. At this particular time of the year, the Chinese New Year, the urbanscape grows the red fungus in barely varying hues of gold, black, green but always the bull-angering-blood-infra red. And so, well, I find myself...conforming uncomfortably and blending into the masses of humanity everywhere, the subway, shopping, office. What a shameful juncture for one who seeks to be different, add her own truffle to the soup, brush that different stroke, strike a drum note to their violins, etc etc.So, I am now on a prowl - for a different colour to call my own. A colour that says Me, and unequivocally calls out my name. Red did and still does, but not when owned by a billion people. This hunt for a new Colour is not so easy because pretty soon I realized that the entire visible wavelength spectrum is already owned by entities , some revered, some crackpot. The Orange is called Saffron and owned by the hindu fundamentalists. The yellow is owned by the Thai monarchy. The green is owned and paraded by Islam - on its mosques, on its prayer books, on their leaflets. The blue is owned by the United Nation disunited in their shared blues. The colour pink is owned by feminists and 'women's issues' type people. White is owned by the clergy and the Catholic diocese for which I have deep childhood-coerced regard. So, there you go. No colour is available. In fact, I soon realized I am not the only one. Several people, persons or organizations realized the limitations of the rainbow coalition. So...they started co-opting the colours. So, now environmental NGO's have adopted green, the colour of Islam. The Red has been adopted by the Red Cross. The colour pink has now been adopted by those who prefer comradeship amongst their own gender. Or, those who have cancer. The colour white is also the colour of peace organizations.

All this leaves the colour Black.

Black is good.

Black is New York.

New York is good.

Black is absence of colour. Absence of colour speaks volumes for who you are - or not.

So, 'my' new colour is Black.

Except that I am brown.