Colorful

A year ago, a stranger at the crossroads motivated me to write a piece. There was nothing extraordinary about this individual; he was just one of many pedestrians that I saw at the four-way intersection on the way to the gym. But the fact that he was seen every evening at the same spot around the same time made me wonder about his whereabouts and make conjectures. My crazy ideas eventually solidified into a post. I have no professional commitments to write, no deadlines to meet. My blog posts do not belong to any distinct genre. Anything under the sun that catches my fancy finds expression in words. As I reach my fiftieth post today, I choose no specific topic and bring a rather comical story. The world is a crazy place; there is no dearth of humorous anecdotes in our daily lives.

I have always been pathetic at drawing, so colors never come to my mind in relation to painting or any art work. Lately however, I have been thinking a lot about colors after seeing the red, orange, and yellow leaves in the backyard that are so much a part of fall splendor. Talking of colors now, my wardrobe, more specifically when it comes to traditional attire, has undergone many changes in the last 6-7 years. After predominantly sticking to whites and pastels for a long time, I have added darker colors to the collection, courtesy my friend. She pointed out that once I start wearing ONLY creams and whites,  I can never get back to brighter hues. And hence the decision to experiment with other choices.

Perhaps the preference for whites and lighter colors runs in the genes, for Mommy dear and my older sibling have always had a leaning in that direction. On a diametrically opposite point, there stand quite a few individuals who have that phobia for softer shades. Not that it’s a crime, tastes vary, and it is absolutely fine. It’s just that, as fictional as it may sound, there were too many uncanny episodes about one such person that tickled many a funny bone. Let me refer to the hero of my story as Mr. S.K.

S.K. is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet, someone who will walk for miles on a cold, freezing night to get a doctor for an ailing friend. He will even bring his bank balance to a staggering zero to help a needy soul. He is definitely someone who is filled with the milk of human kindness. But no man on this planet is flawless, and S.K. would have been the perfect individual if only he were to set aside his fear of light colors and believe in the maxim “Cleanliness is next to godliness.”

On his arrival in a new town, a friend had taken S.K to the store to buy his bedsheets. Rejecting all the lovely colors displayed on the counter, he asked the shopkeeper if there was anything in black. When asked if black was a lucky color advised by some astrologer, pat came the reply which blew his friend out of his wits. The fellow had a mental block that things in black do not get dirty and said that using black bedsheets would spare him the trouble of washing them for at least a good couple of months!

S.K’s birthday happens to fall in the sultry summer month of June, so his prospective in-laws had gifted him a juice maker. A day later, S.K. asked his to-be mom-in-law if she had saved the receipt from the store. Apologetically, he stated that there was a “practical difficulty” associated with the appliance. The problem in question was nothing else but the fact that the gadget was white in color and it would be a herculean task for him to keep it clean and spotless!

Mr. S.K got married amid great pomp and show. On virtually every shopping spree after the wedding that he and his wife went on to buy things for the house, he would point to dark, shocking colors, based on the logic that it would be easier to keep clean and new. Mrs. S.K. initially was moved by her husband’s caring attitude and bragged to her mother that there were very few husbands who worried so much about their wives right up to the minutest detail. As disgusting as his ideas may have sometimes seemed, she justified them as signs of love.

However, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that patience with the spouse is rarely an everlasting virtue in most marriages. And as Mrs. S.K narrated, she too finally lost her patience when she saw her husband’s obsession with dark colors reaching its peak. It happened at the cutlery store when they decided to buy a pile of dishes for a forthcoming party at their house. When Mrs. S.K. selected sparkling white dishes that matched so perfectly with her silver spoons and forks, Mr. S.K, quite normally, recommended a dark-colored set labeled “Hunter Green”. His explanation went along with his usual theory: white is difficult to maintain. That proved to be the final straw. Wife dear instantly lost her temper, and caring little about what others would think, burst out, “This is the limit. Will we not wash the dishes after use and simply wipe them off with a napkin?” Had she been able, she would have liked to systematically destroy the pile of green dishes right over his head. She even thought of walking out, leaving him alone by himself forever. But then she said she reflected and reasoned, “Isn’t he a gem, save his weird ideas?”. The embarrassed look on his face in the midst of staring customers melted her heart. It was obviously one of those moments when silence was golden!