Saturday, July 23, 2011

Going Retro with Red

This is a post I wrote about six years ago. I find it silly and yet good enough to laugh at myself. Back then I called it "Color Me Red."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ With high regards to the one who taught me how to connect the dots from the war  to the flower in Chacha Nehru's pocket  to the Hindu Bridal Dress ~
Besides thinking about the most defining moment of my life, I was browsing videoduniya.com for some random and durlabh Hindi movies I always love talking about. I then came across "Red." Oh come on, I am not that big a bollywood fan to even think about watching or learning more about this movie. What struck me was the importance of this color in my life - so thought of blogging about it. Since blogging is so much IN today that even AmitJi (the LAAL badshaah), Bhuwan (wearing RED while playing a girl in dole dole dil), and Raj (waving good bye while wearning a RED and white t-shirt in DDLJ) find the time to do it, I thought why can't I ...I can't be busier than them.
So, the story begins with the role of this color in my life. This is definitely not my favorite color. I always went for calm and environmental colors like blue and green which lie on the other extreme end of the VIBGY...........OR spectrum. I am anyway not an intense person, at least in public - how could my choice be as intense as red? As a child, I remember wearing red only for dance performances. I never owned any other red asset as best as I can remember except for a red pencil box. Besides that, to me red was always a color of high intensity, high presence, high visibility, and very strong emotions. During high school, my English teacher (Padma Ms) taught us the importance of using colored pens. If you are in a normal mood, you would use blue; to disclose a sad news use black; to congratulate someone use pink; to break a good news use violet;.and to threaten someone or to write a revengeful letter full of rage, use RED. Oh my God, since then RED became more of a stay away color for me. Then there were those highly academic days, when I hated to see a red mark on my notebook highlighting the careless mistakes.
Nevertheless, being a true Gemini, life gave me enough reasons to remain confused. As I grew further in my teenage years, they told me there was a Rose day. Again, the same sort of color classification, yellow stands for friendship, white stands for peace, and red stands for love and romance....! So, I remain there confused--how far should I stay from this color? Was Lakshman Rekha colored too, if yes was it by any chance red? I started playing with the idea of someone giving me a red rose or, on a darker note, writing me a letter in red. I decided never to take either of them seriously as the status this color remained complicated at least to me. Meanwhile, there were times when I went for a blood-test and they took a large volume of red-colored liquid out of my body leaving me even more anemic. I must confess that after watching Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, I did buy that Mausam ka Jaadu's red dress but could wear it even once as everyone unanimously told me - this dress looks good only on Madhuri. I remember my mother telling me don't ever wear a red bindi, not even after getting married - go for a maroon one instead- red doesn't look good on wheatish complexion. Ok, I buy that! And there were articles in the Times of India regarding the Kargil war and the color red as its consequence. There was a time when a punjaban with warm si feelings looked at my wardrobe and said - come on your life is so colorless, how can you not have a red top??? Here in USA, when I went to a hair saloon, they suggested me to go for a hair color - some shade of red....I said - are you seriously kidding me? So, this is the relationship I share with red.
On one hand, the hottest spice we eat is red in color and then the color of "tika" we put during pujas is red too. There surely, is a meaning to this color. So, let me "stop" and step back. The irony is that I can continue with this post only when my g-chat icon turns from red to green. Till then keep redding!

5 comments:

  1. Ohh rits I cant tell you how happy I am to have read this Red article again. I loved it when I read it years ago and always wanted to read it again. This article is so your style. Love it. And if I remember correctly werent you in the RED house tooo... :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. You mean to say my style is totally out of order and random?

    You are right. I was in the red house and so were you.

    ReplyDelete
  3. not an intense person, at least in public --- hahahaha
    Red b/w the lines :-) great post!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Loved this Red-HOT Post of yours... n I (sitting on a RED Carpet) can only comment that....
    Laal Laal .. Laal Laal.. Laal Laal... Dikhe hai Mujhko....
    Jag Laal Laal.. Laal Laal.. Laal laal... Dikhe Hai Mujhko.... :)

    ReplyDelete