As a child, I'd never seen a Rainbow for real. But I remember dreaming about one.
I'd memorise the different colors and wonder if they could be shifted and mixed. I'd wonder if one color drained into another when it rained, like the way my water colors would when I dipped my paintbrush in a palate of water for a little too long. I'd fantasise about collecting pieces of coloured rainbow falling from the sky. I'd even dream of eating them---savouring their taste which I'd imagine would be akin to Poppins, the popular multi coloured hard candy available those days.
But my flights of fancy were soon to end, and one day, I finally witnessed a real rainbow. There it was, peeping at me from behind the clouds, sharing the same sky as the golden sun. I immediately started counting it's colors. But I could hardly discern all seven. This rainbow was nowhere like the mesmerising one I'd seen in books and animations, the one that my childish imagination had fallen in love with. I felt duped...cheated, sold off an inferior quality version when all I'd wished and prayed for was the VIBGYOR of my dreams. My brain and heart, all of seven years, felt terribly let down. And that is when I first realised that reality is never as beautiful as you hope and imagine it to be.
Later in life, I learned that most things are like that. Expectations are often braced with disappointment. But human as we are, we never really learn.
Even now, there are days when I still expect that rainbow, all bright and flashy with seven strips of color and leprechauns flying over it. But soon enough, reality strikes making me feel heavily disappointed and disillusioned.
Nevertheless, the child in me still believes!
When the world is whitewashed of joy and I see no hopeful hues, I reach out to that imaginary rainbow I'd first witnessed in books and animations; the one I'd fallen in love with, the one that set the bar so high that reality couldn't match up to it, the one I still adorn and immortalise with my words and imagination from time to time---My VIBGYOR with all its colors intact, perhaps waiting at the end of this mystifying yet magical experience called life.
I'd memorise the different colors and wonder if they could be shifted and mixed. I'd wonder if one color drained into another when it rained, like the way my water colors would when I dipped my paintbrush in a palate of water for a little too long. I'd fantasise about collecting pieces of coloured rainbow falling from the sky. I'd even dream of eating them---savouring their taste which I'd imagine would be akin to Poppins, the popular multi coloured hard candy available those days.
But my flights of fancy were soon to end, and one day, I finally witnessed a real rainbow. There it was, peeping at me from behind the clouds, sharing the same sky as the golden sun. I immediately started counting it's colors. But I could hardly discern all seven. This rainbow was nowhere like the mesmerising one I'd seen in books and animations, the one that my childish imagination had fallen in love with. I felt duped...cheated, sold off an inferior quality version when all I'd wished and prayed for was the VIBGYOR of my dreams. My brain and heart, all of seven years, felt terribly let down. And that is when I first realised that reality is never as beautiful as you hope and imagine it to be.
Later in life, I learned that most things are like that. Expectations are often braced with disappointment. But human as we are, we never really learn.
Even now, there are days when I still expect that rainbow, all bright and flashy with seven strips of color and leprechauns flying over it. But soon enough, reality strikes making me feel heavily disappointed and disillusioned.
Nevertheless, the child in me still believes!
When the world is whitewashed of joy and I see no hopeful hues, I reach out to that imaginary rainbow I'd first witnessed in books and animations; the one I'd fallen in love with, the one that set the bar so high that reality couldn't match up to it, the one I still adorn and immortalise with my words and imagination from time to time---My VIBGYOR with all its colors intact, perhaps waiting at the end of this mystifying yet magical experience called life.
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V for 'VIBGYOR' is the twenty-first post in the 'A-Z Series' of posts, a chain of scribbles by me on topics starting with each alphabet of the English language. Read back and forth for the other posts, and please feel free to contribute your thoughts on the subje
V for 'VIBGYOR' is the twenty-first post in the 'A-Z Series' of posts, a chain of scribbles by me on topics starting with each alphabet of the English language. Read back and forth for the other posts, and please feel free to contribute your thoughts on the subje
