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the room in my wall is orange. I’m not sure why really. this used to be my brother’s room before I left home. it later became a guest room. my brother has no attachment to the color orange, I dont think I’ve seen that color around him ever. when I asked my parents about it, they couldn’t remember why they chose orange either. the mystery remains unsolved.

I’ve never imagined myself having an orange room. anyone who knows me, really, knows how annoying and particular I can be about colors. I care very deeply about the colors I surround myself with and their relationship with each other and to me. and gosh do I have my phases with them. I have entire periods in my life defined by a color in my memory. I like to look back on my life and see the kaleidoscope of these periods and the versions of me in each of them.

lets start from where I can remember consciously making these distinctions. architecture school obviously meant black. I was a super original teenager. then came the rebellious purple phase, purple hair, purple walls, I was really trying to be a punky emo teenager. as I said, very original.

somehow without me realizing, everything around me slowly turned grey. I convinced myself it was a sign of maturity, get rid of the funky colors, you’ll be finishing college soon. it was also the time I went through depression, seems apt for grey.

there was a flood of color soon, I was in goa. watching the pink sunsets from my terrace every evening made me feel like I was in a jaden smith music video. I listened to summertime in paris and yes I’m changing on repeat for atleast a year.

and then came the garden house, in assagao and with it a new appreciation for the color green. and it was just green for a while. for a long time actually. green was a whole journey on its own mirroring my inner journey. I met multiple versions of myself in that house, and fell in love with different shades of green. there was olive, the young girl in the lockdown with two sisters, adopting a little kitten that would soon become the centre of their lives. then came forest, growing up into her own and exploring waterfalls and the goa jungles. a little bit of yellow entered my life in the form of another person, and soon that forest color turned into sage, building a small family (army) of cats with him, living a ghibli life. there times with midnight green, times of turmoil dealing with some dark emotions, feeling insecure, unworthy and torn. and finally moss, just surrounded by warm palettes and warmth. the greens enveloped my life.

now I’m in a grey city in an orange room. I didn’t think I would like it, but I do. I love it.

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while I was in auroville last year, I learned a bit of tamil. not much, just basic greetings and how to count.

onn

rende

moon

naal

aanj

aar

yell

ett

onbandh

patt

while we sat chilling in the verandah of our tiny house there, eating oranges and watching the two resident doggos, clay and silt laze in the afternoon sun in that sienna colored world of auroville, a friend told me that if you open up an orange in half, you will always have 6 pieces in one half and 5 in the other. 6 and 5, always. aar and aanj. aar-aanj. and that's how the fruit got its name. and thus the color. orange.

I’m sitting in my orange room now, with my orange lamp. I read ‘the orange’ by Wendy Cope the other day. I dont really like poems, I’ve always been inclined to prose rather than verse really. I love that poem though. I thought it would be funny to put up ‘the orange’ on my orange wall, to remind me that sometimes you can love something you never really liked. like the color orange.

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