In All Its Shades
Love is plentiful. Colours are plentiful.
You can’t single out one RGB value and say ‘This is red.’ There are different shades of red, just as there are different shades of blue.
If a sky is always blue, would it make you sit up and look at it? No. Because it turns smoky and white on a cloudy day, or dark and grey on a rainy day, or bright and orange during sunset, it makes you appreciate the blueness of it on a clear day.
That’s exactly how love works. Is love always a mother’s hug? Love is also when mother snatches a stapler from your 2-year-old self, or scolds you when you don’t eat your greens, or worries when you don’t reach home on time. Love is all that.
Just as there is no one shade to depict a colour, there is no one shade of love. The splendour of both lies in their seemingly endless shades that seamlessly merge into one another.
In this compilation of short stories, let’s explore love as shades of colour.
Yellow
We’ve seen enough movies to know what it is like to be in the girl’s shoe when she breaks the news of her man to her father. Ever wondered what it’s like to be in the father’s shoe? Read on.
Beige
We voice for equal treatment of men and women, then why do women have separate seats in the bus, or a separate compartment in a train? Learn why.
Green
What would a brother do when he gets to meet his sister after 3 years? What would a sister do when she gets to meet her brother after 3 years? Get both perspectives in one story.
Brown
One should never believe what a man says before the wedding, Sunitha thinks. Before the wedding, men say they know cooking, they know to do the laundry and they even do a show of it for the first one month. In the very next month, you’ll be hearing ‘It’s 8 PM, why is the dinner not ready?’ or ‘Why is my white shirt not washed?’
“Sunitha, where is my tea?” Sunitha’s husband calls out from the bedroom.
Or this! Sunitha mutters in anger.
White
Has a stranger ever kept the elevator door open for you? Has a stranger ever smiled at your joke you were sharing to a friend? Has a stranger ever offered their seat to you on a crowded bus?
It has happened more than once to all of us. But then why do we not mention these strangers, when we list down the people who love us? Why do they slip off our mind?
It’s because, unlike a sibling’s nurturing-as-nature green love, a father’s bright-as-sunshine yellow love or couple’s comforting-as-home brown love, a stranger’s subtle-as-white love isn’t bright enough like the other colours for you to notice, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. White is all around us.
Orange
We’ve seen enough movies to know what it is like to be in the girl’s shoe when she breaks the news of her man to her father. Ever wondered what it’s like to be in the father’s shoe? Read on.
Purple
We’ve seen enough movies to know what it is like to be in the girl’s shoe when she breaks the news of her man to her father. Ever wondered what it’s like to be in the father’s shoe? Read on.
Baby Pink
If you could peer into an expecting mother’s diary, what do you think you’ll find? Her excitement over the baby’s first kick? Her unending list of baby names? Or her nauseating account of morning sickness?
Here’s a woman sharing her tales of the baby bump. What do you think you’ll find?
Ruby
Lekha and her husband have had a long marriage. But as they adjust to their lives locked up in their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lekha is left wondering if her long marriage was indeed successful.
MY PUBLISHED WORK
In 2018, I published a novel Mis[s]Fortune.
Mis[s]Fortune is a book about Nidhi Vinekar, a 25-year-old data analyst in Bangalore, who thinks the worst that could happen to her in the next two weeks is her ex-boyfriend getting married. But life reminds her that there are bigger forces to play. (Hasn’t life reminded us of this from time to time?)
The story makes you laugh, makes you wonder, makes you sit-up and say ‘hey, that’s so me!’ and leaves you with a warm, fuzzy feeling in the end.
Psst… Let me let you in on a little secret – the paperback cover (and the T-shirt) were designed by me.
Priyaa Sathiyaseelan 