Colours

I've had so many experiences of late that I've been looking for little gems I could polish up for you to add to your "jewelry box" of India.  I thought of colour.

In America we have the saying about our flag that "these colors don't run," meaning that our patriotism, our country's values, and our freedom will not fade away. I like that saying, though here in India, I've had a paradigm shift with colour.

My first week here I went shopping with some colleagues who took me to Commercial Street, a shopping district that makes Times Square, Chinatown and a Turkish bazaar look like nothing more than a daydream.  If you want shopping, ladies, come to Commercial Street!  Not so much a "street" as an intricate labyrinth of alleys, side roads, and shops selling everything imaginable in spaces so small you wonder how anyone breathes.  Every square inch of street space is utilized, lit up, assaulting your ears and eyes with sounds and colour--a teen hawking little whirling things, a scarf man flirting with the crowds and capturing you in fabric folds, and salespeople that hover, hover, hover, over every kurta (tunic) you try and every shoe you touch.

We enter one slightly nicer store with beautiful fabrics so I can try on some kurtis, shorter hip-length versions of the kurta tunics, which tend to hit my calves as I'm not very tall.  (It's all about proportion in fashion, ladies--dress for your body type!)  Anyway, I tried on a gorgeous deep turquoise kurti with gold rick-rack trim at the neck and sleeves.  It fit perfectly, so I took it.  The first day I wore it I felt beautiful, dressing like the locals.  Come bedtime when I pulled it off I discovered it had dyed my armpits a gorgeous shade of bright turquoise.  That took about two days of serious loofah. 

Colour is everywhere.  As you bump along through traffic your eyes dart to houses painted striking hues of terra cotta, red, cerulean blue, deep sage,--even purple.  In the Hindu religion the entrances to homes (be they gates or doorsteps) are decorated with garlands of marigolds and tropical flowers, while in front of the entrance intricate chalk designs are traced in white and filled in with a brighter shade or even fresh blossoms.  Every morning the front entrances are washed, sweeping away yesterday's beauty with the promise of more to come.

I cannot escape colour even while eating.  Many dishes are eaten with your hands by wrapping the sauce in naan, or other flatbread.  After any curry dish my nails are stained a bright shade of turmeric, a hue somewhere between mustard and chartreuse.  It lends some gypsy to my look.

Enter my home--the painter who ended up coming to paint over the mess the contractors had left asked me to help him choose the paint shade.  Being American, I immediately thought to match the existing wall colour, a light beige, to preserve the apartment's retail value.  After deliberating I chose what appeared to resemble beige.  When I returned home to see the painting progress I was surprised and delighted to find the colour I had chosen was actually palest pink, the inside of a sea shell.  As each room was completed I found a smile creeping up my face as the rooms took on a warm, rosy glow.  When I told a colleague about it, she said that it was a good thing because I needed a little romance in my life and that colour was one way of adding it.  Maybe I do need a little romance.  While I pity the gent that gets this place after me, I don't even care because it's just so darn pretty.

Fabrics run.  Towels shed.  I bought this soft new set of cobalt blue towels for my bathroom and discovered that the more I wash them the more they coat everything they touch in deep blue fuzz.  My floor is fuzzy.  I am fuzzy.  I pick the lint off my face and use an old t-shirt to dry my hands.  Maybe on wash number three I'll achieve a state of colourfast.

Speaking of washing, there are no dryers in India.  I have a clothesline on the roof terrace which commands a view of all the neighborhood's rooftops adorned in brightly-coloured, drying clothing.  I clothespin on my pieces of  rooftop decoration and smile, thinking that the true flag of India is really a patchwork of coloured laundry.