Of all the colours on the planet, I believe I am the most
powerful. I am the only one who can impregnate the night sky with stars. If it weren’t
for me, you wouldn’t be able to tell the dawn from the dusk.
I am an anti-ageing solution; people use me to dye their graying
tresses back to youthfulness.
I am a wardrobe essential- from corporate wear to cocktail
dresses, I never fail.
I am the deepest, darkest shade of the iris. I am the
asphalt that paves the roads across the globe. I am here and there and everywhere.
You cannot have a day without me. Or, to be more precise, a night.
I am black.
So, I was obviously enraged when ‘green’ came to me the
other day, challenging me, claiming to be the most widespread colour on the
face of the earth. It was easy to make him see light, though. The world’s forest
cover is diminishing and the roads forever expanding.
I am leading the race.
‘Yellow’ proudly boasted of the sun’s far reaching light and
sought to establish dominance. But, it didn’t know that the 23.5 degrees tilt
of the earth’s axis leaves half the world grappling with the dark, at any given
point of time.
I still lead.
The blues of the sky failed simply because they kept
switching shades throughout the day. Such insecurity about one’s own identity…tch
tch.
There’s no beating me.
But, then came red. A colour that has terrified me, has kept
me on tenterhooks like never before. Carrying death in its wake of terror, leaving
a trail of blood everywhere from Nice in France to Baghdad in Iraq to Dhaka in
Bangladesh, to Syria, to Pakistan to almost every nook and corner of the world,
it is my toughest competitor.
But, I remain unbeaten.
Do you know why?
For every person who dies, there are so many mourners.
Death may be bathed in red, but the mourners at funerals
still swear by black.
