“Auburn in Autumn” – The Pink Penchant

Words Zahra K.  
Digital Art Sakina K. 

By qualification I am a Home-Science graduate with a specialization in Foods, Nutrition and Dietetics from Nirmala Niketan College of Home-Science, Mumbai. 6 years after I left college and 4 years after I got married, I found my niche in writing and went on to do a short course in Creative Writing from St. Xavier’s Institute of Communication, Mumbai. I am a happy homemaker, a student for life and a deep thinker. I have an emotional connection to food and so cooking for me is therapy. I am an ardent reader and a bibliophile. I love to dig in the little details of everything that catches my attention. I have an OCD for running things on schedule.

Currently, I am working from home as a content writer. I also write about various topics on my blog occasionally.

 

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The first time I learnt that blue is for boys and pink is for girls was in a poem in kindergarten. But a teacher I still fondly remember told me that, “The colour that best defines who you are, is your colour. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”        It was much later in life that I truly understood what she meant. Now, it has been donkey’s years since I’ve been naturally drawn to this colour.

My mother triumphantly kept me away from makeup for a long time under the pretext of keeping my skin supple and ‘pink’. I remember wearing a pink uniform to madrasah, and most of the stationary I bought at the beginning of every academic year of school was pink. When my nieces were born, everything I bought for them from a pin to a piano was pink, and the tradition still continues. My school house was ‘Lotus’ and my room was painted pink when we renovated.  I am not sure whether the love of this colour was orchestrated in my mind by various experiences, but I have always felt connected to it.

When adorned in pink I am absolutely myself, as it strongly represents the ‘wach gaaley chalvanu’ school of thought I am so diligent about. I try my best to always take the middle path and not entertain the extremities in any case, be it with human emotions, relationships or petty issues in general. Pink is the embodiment of a middle ground. It is uncomplicated, simple and everything goes with it. Contrast or unite it with any colour and it’ll display a uniqueness of its own. I think that’s a metaphor for how I wish to live my life. Most problems can be solved with this path and energy is saved for the bigger, more important ones that require putting a firm foot down at one end.

I contrived my own definition of pink when I discerned how much the colour resonated with my ideas & thoughts. We commonly view situations in life in black, white or grey. My grey area here is pink… not the coy, giggly-girl kind of pink.

It is my colour because it stands on the bridge between white and red without crossing on either side and remains the mid territory of peace and anger. To me, it is balance, a beautiful balance that’s so pretty and suave to look at.

The world we live in today has so many attractions – the white light – to pull us away from our roots. Our lifestyle has become so challenging that anger – the red – is a recurrent emotion. Therefore, I constantly remind myself that I will always be in the “pink” of health, if:

1. I don’t let the light of the world around, fade away the light that’s inside of me and,
2. I don’t allow the temper inside of me engulf the world outside and let it cloud my sensible judgment.

It’s a cliché that pink is feminine. I see a lot of men carry off pink shirts and kurtas like it’s no one’s business and I believe they embrace it gracefully themselves because they do not associate women with a certain colour. To me it is more a symbol of competence and compassion than a portrayal of feminine vulnerability.

My fondness for the colour goes beyond the materialistic. A Mumin in sorrow who has cried his heart out on the day of Ashura reflects pink on his noorani face. To me, it is strength, dignity, love and courage, all at the same time. Even the flowers we put on the turbats of our Awliyah Kiraam are pink and they denote the colours of shifa and barakat. For me, there’s well-being and happiness in pink.

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