COLORS IN INDIA

Color.

How can one describe the vibrancy, or depth, or energy of a color to another person? Paralleling the beautifully contemplative storyline of the Giver, what if our world was black and white? Having never experienced color, we'd know not what we were missing. But once it is introduced, color is something that is fundamentally experienced and understood without words. You don't have to describe "red" to know it represents lust, and fire, and sacrifice of war. You don't have to describe "blue" to understand that it represents the vastness of the heavens, familiarity, and depth of someone's eyes, or the endlessness of the ocean. Color brings vitality to our existence - almost a second language inter-woven into our physical world.

Why am I so hung up on color, and where am I going with this? Well, this ponderance on color introduces a metaphor that I was introduced to. On my first day in India 2 summer ago, a good friend of mine Albin planted this metaphor in my head, either entirely by whimsical and tangential spewing of his thoughts, or by intentional sharing of his view of the cultures of this world. I've actually never asked him to clarify how calculated his words were that afternoon we met. Either way, this is what he told me:

“Bring the colors you find here back home to the United States because you need to paint your life with as many colors as possible."

"Wow, I really like that. I guess a painting is boring with just one color, huh?”

“Yes, and India has many, many colors to offer you.”

In other words, welcome to the colorful side of my blog. Here I hope to detail the colors I'm collecting; the spices of cultures I add to my palate; the people I encounter, the places walkthrough. Many of these splashes of color I believe will be unlike any color I've experienced. Whether they represent a slight difference in hue from my comfort spectrum, or whether they represent entire new colors I hadn't known existed, I wish to see all experiences as expanding the spectrum with which I paint my life mural. I'm excited because as Albin said, India has so many colors to offer; both physically and metaphorically!