I AM ANGELICA

My name is Angelica, though this is not my real name. It’s a name given to me by the man who I love very passionately and who loves me more than I do him.

I was born in a small hospital in a small town run by a dedicated Anglo-Indian doctor, or so my mother said. Mother said it was a cold January night of pain and angst when she delivered me and she could see patches of blood splayed all over the doctor’s white coat, even though the lights were dim and she was almost passing out, while he deftly tried to wriggle me out of her. The doctor and the nurses assisting him kept telling her that everything was fine when actually it was not. Mother didn’t deliver me normally. No, you shouldn’t think it was a Caesarean but it was a breech delivery. A Wikipedia definition of a breech delivery means the birth of a baby, in which the baby exits the pelvis with the buttocks or feet first as opposed to the normal head-first presentation. This process presents some hazards to the baby during the process of birth.

Mother thought she wouldn’t live to see me but she fought a war raging in her head; a war of voices telling her that if millions of women have become mothers, why not her too? And she survived. Father was elated the next morning when he saw me, cuddling me close to his heart when his turn came.

All this is just besides the point of what I want to say.

I love the colour red. I have always loved it. Red has attracted me like no other colour. It’s beautiful. I can almost always touch the beauty of red as it radiates energy, love, elation, passion and so much more. It is life itself. A radiance, a shine I find in no other colour. I love the fact that red is the colour at the end of the spectrum opposite to violet, next to orange.

But my loving the colour red was always looked at dispassionately by mother, who never ever stitched me the red pinafore I wanted to wear. When I asked her what was her justification for not letting me wear red, when every other friend from class has been wearing something or the other in red, she promptly told me that it was ‘too bright’ and ‘not good’ for me.

However, at 16 she stitched me a red blouse with a flouncy chiffon skirt. I was elated.

My affinity for red grew as I grew older, though this time around, I didn’t feel the happiness I attached the colour with when I was small.

I had never seen the colour of blood. Is it black, blue, pink or yellow? I wish I knew. The other day someone told me, “Don’t be silly! Don’t you know the colour of blood? It is red?” But is it? I always associated red with life. Red means love. Red was the colour of the sun in my painting which I especially did for Dad when I was four years. Red was the colour of my ribbons I wore in my hair to school. Red is the colour of the gown I have been dreaming to wear for that dance with my beau. Red is the bindi I wear on my forehead.

But ofcourse, red is the colour of life. Red is the colour which courses through everyone’s veins. Red is the colour of my glass bangles. Red is the rose blooming in my neighbour’s garden.

But recently, I have been seeing too much red. A red which I didn’t like at all!

Since when has red started pouring from the throat of a Shia as a Sunni slits it open? Is it the same colour which was splayed all across the floors and walls of the school where terrorists wearing suicide jackets gunned down more than a 150 students in Peshawar? What was the fault of all those innocent people in Mumbai who were randomly and recklessly gunned down with AK-47s by terrorists in 2008 where more than a 170 lay in pools of red? What was the fault of my people who died in red all across the state of Assam in 2008, planned by the very same people who call themselves Assamese? Did Damini know she would be defiled in red when she was raped in a moving bus in Delhi?

And this is not the end of the story of red. It continues everyday between friends, families, neighbours across the world inside their very homes.

Boko Haram, ISIS, Taliban, terror groups working closer home and all your comrades around the World, if you’re listening, I want to tell you that I love the colour red. It is the most beautiful colour ever. But I like it on my forehead, on the dresses of beautiful girls, on my shoes, on the cheeks of little children, on flowers and cherries. I definitely don’t like it on a gaping wound of a helpless child, on the mutilated body of a young girl and on anyone who is at your mercy.

My name will always be Angelica and I will always love the colour red!