What was Cleopatra's favourite colour?

Cleopatra painting on Papyrus - www.fromcairo.com

What was Cleopatra's favourite colour? ... It was Purple! The royal colour...the colour of divinity and that of the rich...the colour that possesses in itself a lot of mystery and perplexity...the colour that embodies the stimulation of red and the calmness of blue...

Before I started writing this post today I had planned to write about Violet but I could not resist the mystic qualities of purple and therefore had to write about it!!! Although not too far away from each other in the colour spectrum, both these colours are quite different technically. While purple is a range of hues between red and blue and is used as a common term to describe the same, Violet refers to the last colour of the short wavelength end of the visible spectrum. 

I associate purple with royalty... It is what I feel when I am treated as a princess. Whether it is Baba trying to organise quick shipping of my demands from overseas or M cancelling a meeting because I need help with something silly... I don't know whether they do it to make me feel like a princess (I desperately hope that they don't feel pressurised to do it!) but I feel happy and Purple when they do it!

Bonuram and me were always treated like princesses when we were growing up... Although we were taught the realities of life, we were always made to feel special!!! I remember Thamma cooking hot breakfast for us at day-break, Dada ironing our clothes to make going to school easier.. And Ma Baba  sacrificing a lot of their comforts to afford taxis for our commute to school and back... These things did not seem too big then... But today when I am a mom myself I know how much it took... How difficult yet easy it was for them to make our lives royal... When I look back at the rainbow of childhood memories, Violet/Purple seems to be the logical colour behind every shade of Orange, Red or Yellow as the happiness and joy that we felt then was because somebody thought that we were worthy of it... Because Ma, Baba, Thamma, Dada thought we were princesses and made efforts to help build our lives likewise....This painting is in honor of that feeling of Purple!



Painting by Dita

What childhood memories can you relate to Purple? When you spend time with your present parter in crime, do you feel Purple?

Saffron, White and Green

The 3 colours that dominate all sphere's on this special day, in the life of an Indian are Saffron, White and Green...yes I am talking about the Indian Independence Day...and this year we are celebrating 65 years of Independence...

Wikipedia defines Independence as a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over the territory. To me however this term now means much, much more than this! I can’t help but quote Rabindranath Tagore here as what I feel cannot be put in better words than his own...



Image from Google



Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.



I get goose bumps every time I read those words...my eyes fill up and I experience this immense overwhelming emotion within that I cannot describe in words...but if I were to put colours to those thoughts they would definitely be Saffron, White and Green!...

They remind me of one special journey back home with my grandfather (DADA) on the eve of Independence Day back in 1997. There were events planned in all the Community Centres, Schools, Institutions, and Colleges...everywhere... Everybody was celebrating 50 yrs of Indian Independence. Even I was very excited about all the festivities that were to happen at school the next day...Dada, like his normal self was also very thrilled about all that was happening around us...but suddenly the smile faded a little and he seemed to be lost in thoughts...on being asked what happened he said to me that he could see in front of him the same day in 1947 as if it happened just yesterday...He did not say any further! Today I realise what he meant by that...I can now, while madly punching at my keyboard, see the events of 1997 happening right in front of me....I can see the bright eyes of the teenager at school all excited about the events, proud to be the flag-bearer...happy, joyfull and full of dreams! And what makes me glad today is that I am still the dreamer that I was 15 yrs back...

Work-in-Progress Painting by Dita