Nonfiction by Sandra Marilyn
The noise seemed to have been born of the profusion of color that swirled around the hundreds of people sharing the streets on our first day in India.
It was as if one of the gods or goddesses said, “There will be too many of you and you won’t have much money, but I’ll give you an extra serving of color and it will define your brave spirits.”
Then the color rained down on them in great splashes making their houses lavender and orange, or outrageously crimson, making their lorries bright yellow each with an individual design of flowers on every paintable surface. The color even splashed on the horns of the garlanded cows occupying their rightful place in the streets.
The temples rose steadily up into the sky with layer after layer of deities, demons, monkeys, elephants, cows, and garlands all painted in every vibrant shade of beautiful with none of the West’s concern about appropriate combinations. My heart flew to the heavens with the soaring temples as I stood looking up letting the colors shower me with their abundance.
In the markets women with long strings of flowers in their hair sold powered colors that were displayed in rows of perfect pyramid shaped piles. The cobalt blue, lime green, scarlet, gold, orange, violet of their saris wrapped around their bodies as if to protect them from the tediousness of the world. There were no black, gray, or brown saris. The women on pilgrimage together at the shore all wore vibrant orange and yellow saris and moved laughingly together like a giant orange flower with yellow borders on its pedals.
Cars honking, cows mooing, children laughing, motorcycles revving, people shouting. The noise that might have been jarring took on the life of the colors running together in an ecstatic cacophony. Even in the noise there was no gray.
When I returned home my old house looked much bigger, much more convenient, much more reflective of my privilege than I had noticed on returning from other trips. Yet, the lack of noise and color was unsettling. I stood at the window feeling a profound boredom settle into my bones. Most of the houses I could see were versions of beige; many were gray; one was actually black. There were no flowers painted on trucks or cars; there were no animals walking freely down the street; women leaving their houses for work wore predictably dull clothes. I wondered if I would be able to live with the cheerlessness of our normal.
In the next few weeks I pulled out the ladders and tarps and set about the long task of painting my house a considerably brighter blue, shiny periwinkle actually, than it had ever been before. All the while I scraped and sanded, lugged paint buckets, and dragged my weary legs up and down ladders, I was saying a sort of prayer for my old house.
“I will honor your soul with this magnificent color if you will protect me from the bleakness and harshness of the world.” She agreed, of course.
Sandra Marilyn, her wife, and a dog live in an old house on the side of a hill in San Francisco. She looks out the window at a view of the city and wonders about the lives of people who live in other cities. And she writes about them every day.
