Blue is my colour

Blue has always been my colour. However, not in a way that I wrapped everything around me in blue to shout out to the world that it is my favourite colour. But in this way, we share the most intimate and vulnerable part of ourselves with only those we love.

In my first visit to the Himalayas, I captured so many pictures of the faraway mountains. It didn't have any real picturesque value, but it was tinted with different shades of blue as we moved forward through those long winding roads in the mountains. It captivated me and I hardly had any words to describe that feeling where the beauty and melancholy are so inseparable. Those blue landscapes stirred up emotions that I always fail to express in words, but find their way through tears.

I knew that I am not alone in feeling the same way about blue. But I never chased history or even asked anyone if they feel the same. At the same time, mountains and sea, which many of us cannot help not to love, are shaded in blue. So deep inside I have always known that it is not just me who feels the same way about the colour blue. I got the much longed for validation of my emotions when I found Rebecca Solnit's A field guide to getting lost. The book has this cover page of distant mountains tinted in different shades of blue. It reminded me of the countless times I have been moved by the same visuals as well.

Solnit talks about the blue of distance, the distances which vanish when we finally arrive. Mountains usually bring about a sense of joy in me because I believe it gives us a sense of accomplishment after reaching the summit. At the same time, the faraway mountains from that summit give another purpose to carry on with the journey. In a different way, the deep blue sea brings out the sorrow that I always try to bury deep inside and it is a reflection of the depth of my emotions. It brings back the memory of lost things while mountains take me to the "what could have been?". Both emotions are tinged with melancholy.

The blue of distance comes with time, with the discovery of melancholy, of loss, the texture of longing, of the complexity of the terrain we traverse, and with the years of travel. If sorrow and beauty are all tied up together, then perhaps maturity brings with it not what Nanban calls abstraction, but an aesthetic sense that partially redeems the losses time brings and finds beauty in the faraway.

Now when I think about it, that first visit to the Himalayas was also the first time I experienced loss with the most excruciating pain. Those deep shades of blue reflected my inner misery and yet made me look forward to the next shade of blue in the faraway. It also taught me that it is okay to look at the faraway mountains with a yearning that nobody understands and it's okay not to be wanting to cross that distance.

Some things we have only as long as they remain lost, some things are not lost only so long as they are distant.

Reading Solnit felt like having a deep conversation with someone who gets what I was feeling when I look at the distant mountains and the deep blue sea. Even though I could never summon the exquisiteness of Solnit's prose in describing what I feel, it was a solace that such a book existed. The existence of such books makes me feel less alone in this world.