Blue became my colour by default. I did not know one day some people would think I represent blue. The blue of tranquillity. Of melancholia. Of bruises. Of neon lights. Of the blues…songs that wrench the soul away from the body, leaving both helpless and bare, like tree stumps.
I wish autumn were blue. Think about blue leaves floating on grey streets and blue branches hanging on to brown trunks and roots tinged with the residue of the blue that has fallen on them.
In school I had a blue eraser; I remember it so well because I saw how it was slowly being reduced to nothing. When I first bought it I loved the scent. I liked the ones that had a fragrance. I would sniff it often. Then would start the erasing…rub-rub-rub. Till everything was rubbed out and little sticky pieces would lie there on the sheet of paper which I’d blow away with breath. Soon the square eraser had begun to look rounded and the black of the pencil marks had left imprints on it. What it had tried to erase was now stuck to it. There was a lesson, which I did not learn then. I never did learn the lesson although I learnt about it.
Later, it was mandatory to use ink pens. It was a wonderful process as we filled up the ink and then shook it over the page as drops fell to indicate that indeed the pen was now ready to undertake the task of penning our thoughts. A blotting paper would soak the ink, but the blotches remained. They usually do.
Then, I remember one of my kurtas. It was firozi and I do not have an exact translation of the kind of blue it is. I only remember it was short and I wore it over jeans and when it came back from ironing I’d crumple it and between those creases the colour deepened as though it were holding secrets. I felt deliciously sinful just clinging to it.
I recall that drink. I ordered it only because it was blue. Don’t know what they put in, no memory of ingredients or even the taste. But I remember the colour. The mocktail mocking me with its cold stare. I felt transfixed as though something was being exorcised. I got into a trance-like state and felt myself drowning in that glass. Maybe my eyes would be dancing in there and watching me. Ice-cube eyes.
I have stood for hours watching snow refusing to melt as we awaited the dawn. Winter turned the vista into blue.
I imagine myself walking across a blue sea, the blue of the sky reflected in it. My skin looks blue in the darkish light. It feels like water. It feels like sky.