Is your sky pink too?

 - Aditi 

 

"Blind, shrouded from the world, I drew outside lines, coloured the sun a wistful shade of pink, the sky an awning tint of yellow, and the land was but the sea, twilight waves, with candy cane trees, and tiny creatures, I drew my ‘SCENERY' The same scenery that is a fix, two mountains, a river that runs in the valley, the blue sky dotted with the birds flying in a v formation, a hut that led to a mysterious winding road that fell off the edge – THE SCENERY. 

Little did I know skies are to be painted blue, I held the reigns of imagination, and the world was a kaleidoscopic mirage of colours, a grimoire of patterns, a hypnotic maximalism spell that I was so in love with. The world I could see through closed eyes was infinite, it ended where imagination found its slumber at the sunset of creativity, in a quiet twilight rest. But like every child, I wanted to see, I wanted to know what the world looked like, I wanted to see others.

 Lost was the blindfold in an impulse of curiosity, and I was mesmerised by the variation, the people, the way they lived their lives, it drew me in, the feeling of wanting to be like them itched within me, the desire to be called one of them. I observed for days and I tried to format myself within that algorithm, to win their approvals, their affections, I wanted to prove that I belonged with them. There was so much variety, nothing grew old, there was always something new; last week it was vintage, then it was clean girl, brat summer, labubus and stanleys and lululemon, and now it was sad beige. But it was sad, I thought as I rubbed the beige into my skin. I was finally a part of it, but I was, a small, invisible, insignificant part of it. I looked at the girl next to me, we were the same, and so was the crowd around us, we were all dyeing, staining our souls in the new addiction of the week. We all were blindly wrapping ourselves in the new shiny wrapping paper, only to be torn off next season and re wrapped to be relevant to others, others who were doing the same. Everyone was a hollow shell, changing colours like a chameleon to make themselves relatable. 

 But I, I was lost, the sun had set on my pink skies, camouflaged into a blind shade of blue. Starved by the need of relevancy, I had chained down imagination and drowned out originality. Society sold the feeling of belonging, relevancy, relatability, all at the small cost of one’s individuality, and blissfully blind to it all, spellbound by the advertisements of unity, I was actually restricting my voice, I was blurring out the very thing that made me, me, forcing my mind into the mould, to blend into the crowd of beige. But my sky is pink, it is the un-adulted bubble-gum pink, and I missed living under that soft pink glow, so I tore it off, the layers of make-belief I had put on to be one of them. "

 If there was a camera, at this moment it would zoom out, and the shot would be a canvas, single colourful stroke amidst a beige background, shining through, speaking out. And if this was a fairytale, the recording would end here, but life, is far from it. And so, the beige, stroke by stroke, all followed suit, everything colourful, "standing out is the new fitting in", and once every stroke was coloured, colourful but colourless, it looked the same, a blend, a continuous colourful monotone. Do they truly stand out? I wonder, and it would be a funny coincidence if it were true, is their sky pink too?