Reflections on Colors and Face value

DISCLAIMER

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental and unintentional.

 

Very soon, it is going to be the festival of Holi, the festival of colors.

There are going to be colors everywhere, colors of every shade and hue, symbolizing an important thing, that we use colors to express and spread happiness!

Rightly so, the importance and the use of colors to express joy and cheer in our lives can never be underestimated. No wonder, in Art and Paintings classes, we have an emotion associated with each color! White represents peace, blue calmness, red anger, and so on.

Holi is a representation of the exuberance of colors and the way they light up our lives, it is about the happiness that color brings to our lives.

Children, teenagers, the young, and the old are so immersed in this festival of colors that often their entire faces and body get colored.

It was during one such Holi in my childhood that we kids, after having colored each other’s bodies and faces completely, wanted to click a picture of our gang. Those were the ‘pre-smartphone’ times, where taking pictures was an elaborate process. And developing those photos was an ever more elaborate and time-consuming process.

So when the pictures of our rowdy Holi gang were finally developed, we were more than eager to have a glimpse of ourselves.

And imagine our surprise when we could hardly identify ourselves! 

Each of us took such a long time to find out his or her photo in the group……that it was both surprising and shocking!

The reason was obvious.

Our faces were so colored that we were unrecognizable and it was almost impossible for us to figure out ‘who was who’. And we ended up identifying ourselves or each other not by our faces, but by the typical clothes or shoes that we had worn that day!

This made me think, are we identified only by our faces?

Is our identity only due to our faces and nothing more?

If our faces were to be colored or darkened by some color, can we still identify and recognize ourselves?

The importance that we give to our faces for our identity and recognization is so deeply intense that we know of hardly any other way of identifying ourselves without our unique face.

Maybe this is what they call ‘face value’, but we all know that it is not the complete truth.

For we are more than merely our face however pretty and unique it might be and however possessive we might be about it.

We are our thoughts, we are our actions, we are our ambitions, we are our dreams, we are our educational qualifications, we are our designations, we are our family values, we are our beliefs, we are our fears, we are this and much.….much more.

So this Holi, when you see your face or anyone else’s, completely colored and unrecognizable, step back for a moment and think …………..about your true and complete identity and value ………………which is simply more than your mere face value!