“Forever that girl who gets excited when the sky is in pretty colors”

Since my Instagram debut, I’ve shared this  story quite a lot of times and it still ceases to resonate with me. Skies, for me, have always been a pageant of colors. I’ve even wondered if  Pantone was secretly taking notes from the colors of the sunset. 

This is not a love letter. It is a rant of desperation addressed to skies, the masterpiece I love to stare at any time of the day. Opening my gallery would be like landing up in an astronomical delight, all thanks to the various hues of sky I’ve managed to capture with my okayish photography skills. Sadly the only way I’ve access to these is through snapchat where my kind friends keep up with streaks. For a connoisseur of skies, this is a heartbreak.

Since my childhood, I had this weird obsession of addressing colors by their exact names. The color of sunset wasn’t sunset yellow, it was ochre. The deep sea wasn’t green-blue, it’s turquoise. Explaining the difference between pink, fuschia and magenta was my area of expertise. I may sound like a freak but this was my cheap thrill.  Little did I know that these colors would be embedded in the most exhilarating sunset I was to witness through a train window amidst the prattle of children and a wondrous smile on my face. When I entered the territory of watercolors, it was the skies I always painted. Sunsets, dim skies, cotton candy clouds, starry nights, you name it! 

Honestly speaking, I hated the sunsets when I was in school. They meant only one thing – end of my playtime. I never took notice of the skies. I was too engrossed in life that I forgot to look up. Later, when I would whimper about being lonely, these very skies would console me with their myriad hues. The colors of sunset in my eyes, a coffee mug in my hand, I’d be pacing my terrace totally lost in the miracle.

But stuck in the house for 50 days, it’s the skies I miss the most. 

Everyday, I try to appease myself and try to paint into my palette the colors I find in these snaps. Sometimes I’m so desperate that I nag my friends to send me snaps of the sky. 

A friend texted me saying, “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end”. I’ve been contemplating on this for a long time. I really wish I could end this on an optimistic note, but I’m still a girl waiting to go out under the canopy of skies and fill in myself with those colors.