Indigo !
A color I am in love with. Slowly in the beginning. And suddenly all at once. Like how the sunrise happens. Navy blue is the only color I could see, for the last few years. Indigo and all the other shades were the poorer, uncouth and not so sophisticated cousin of navy. Recently, something changed. I have amassed as much navy blue as a human in my situation could possibly need. A visual greed has been satiated. Another has taken it’s stead. Shades of indigo. They are all made from the same mother but came out in gradients because of a certain interaction between human toil, the dye, wind, air, light and water. It’s alchemy. With every wash, it continues to evolve. This time, the weave of the garment and the way you launder your clothes plays a role. Every shade is a result of a collaboration between the elements. There is the tao. The steady and the change. The order and the chaos. There is a yin and a yang. Seeing it in color – is a new sensation for me. Reading about wabi sabi helped me see it. To see aging of things as an experience, had to be learnt. The consumer culture I live in taught me that only the new clothes provide experiences that are worthy. The marketing wizards managed to convince me that to achieve happiness and progress, I constantly need the new. To find what they promised in the same old garment, is almost an act of rebellion and resistance. When I do laundry, I take my time to observe the indigo t-shirt that I dyed last year. Bring it close to the eye and your vision switches to a shallow depth of field like an f/1.4 50mm lens does. The indigo cloth becomes a painting of sort. After every wash, this painting mutates into something else. It’s beautiful in its own way. Denim works this way too. Unfortunately, I constantly forget what I have learnt and stray. The remedy ? More journaling. More reading. More yoga. More meditation. More mindfulness. More gazing at how indigo is worn around the world. More {low-carbon} travel. Change the view point, and everything changes. It applies to color too. I have come the full circle with indigo. It’s something I adored as a child but lost out on, after I went in search of a certain kind of elegance. After the bubble burst, I am finding my way back again.
Indigo on Indigo :
Denim on Denim :
Indigo with red :
