How our earth is more than a pale blue dot

Then, there is green: the colour of life! The magic cell (chloroplast) which converts sunlight into food through photosynthesis reflects green light, hence the majority of all plants are green and that’s probably why greens make us feel secure. Most sensible countries (alas, there are fewer and fewer every year) protect their green spaces zealously and by planting trees and guarding forests, increase their precious green areas. Apart from turning sunlight into food, with the help of water and that notorious gas carbon dioxide, plants supply us life-giving oxygen. In spite of this, we are hacking down the greenest of our green places at a criminal rate – the teeming, humming tropical rainforests of the Amazon, South East Asia, and our very own Western Ghats and the Northeast, brimming with exotic endemic species.

We are so desperate to show ourselves and the rest of the world that our ‘green areas’ are increasing every year that we have started including golf courses, lawns (and who knows: tennis courts painted green) into our audits. And greens (not only broccoli, spinach and kale) are good for us – walk under a canopy of newly minted neem leaves or in a grassy meadow and you will feel the knots in your forehead smoothen out and the scowl on your face replaced by a smile. Green soothes – even doctors know that – and will advise a walk in the park when you are upset.

And as always, there are a myriad of shades: from pale peppermint green, crème de menthe (there are a whole lot of green cocktails), bottle green, fresh grass green, to the dark brooding greens of pine and fir forests.

As for yellow – the colour of the sun and of vast undulating deserts. Again, without the sun, there can be no life. It’s a bright, happy, vibrant colour, visible from afar and the choice of so many flowering plants in order to attract bees (which can’t see red) and other pollinators.

A close cousin – orange – the colour of fire and flames. Life-takers and life-givers both. Without fire, there will be no cooked food, no heat and warmth, no cosy fireside chats, no sunsets to stare at holding hands, no iron and steel industries. But yes, this is a colour that we must be wary of, that needs to be controlled. We all know how fast and furiously, flames from forest fires can travel and consume everything in their path. It’s a colour animals know to fear and flee from and wisely so. But then again, mangoes, too, can be a vivid orange and oh, so sweet.

Finally, there’s red: again, the colour of life itself – blood! Is this why dudes offer their girlfriends bouquets of red roses? And why red is associated with warnings: when the red flags go up you move out, when the lights change to red, you (should) cram on the brakes. Even a single bead of blood on your fingertip will signal an alarm, though with the way the world is going even ‘rivers of blood’ do not seem to affect our leaders at all these days. For carnivores, red is the colour of sustenance – of fresh meat and marrow – again the colour of life for them, if for death for their prey.

And then, there are what I call the ‘bookend’ colours – black and white! One, the absence of colour and the other the result of what happens when you merge all the seven together. We are scared of and abhor the former associating it with darkness and evil, though as British journalist Jay Griffiths lyrically writes: “All good things are cradled in darkness first: seeds and babies, sleep’s dreams and the heart’s love, compost and starlight.”

White, we associate with purity and piety and soft snow and while it might look good on a polar bear (which is not actually white but black), we have seen what man has done to our multi-coloured planet and its denizens.

So many of the things we deem as precious have these colours, too. Jewels, for instance – sapphires, emeralds, rubies, and gold. A diamond, blazing forth all the colours of the rainbow is nothing but a hard carbon rock (and carbons is one of the commonest elements around) but we react to it (and it makes girls swoon!), with ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ because we see all those vital life colours (and so many in-between) flaring out of it.