The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

Holi is the festival of colours in India. Colours reminds me of Art class in school. It was a 2 hour class where we could chat with friends and our home works were enjoyable. Art home works involved sitting in cramped positions, surrounded by pungent paints and blotchy newspaper. The hours of patient work would result in a rewarding A+. Art sir, was generous enough to give A+ to anybody who worked. I guess, 3 years of art in high school helped me inculcate patience to deal with engineering drawing in college and solve tough problems at work.

I want to convey how seemingly insignificant things affect us a lot. In context of colours I seem to have a fascination for the color blue. I seem to be drawn towards it uncounsiously and realized this a few weeks back. I’ll list a few things I like that are blue. I enjoy swimming, the color of the pool is light blue with the darker shades on it. Captain America, Spider-man, Batman are my favorite superheros. I like Argentina their jersey is light blue. The cartoon characters Garurumon, Lugia and Kai have blue in them. Obi wan in Star Wars is my favorite character and he has a blue light saber. I had a crush on a girl when I was 12 and she wore a blue sweater. 

I felt that I didn’t genuinely like the things above. I was just a pawn for this unknown fascination. Still looking back Sonic the hedgehog, Mummies Alive. Phantom, favorite blue car in my first car racing game (10 years). My junior school in Mysore had a blue color uniform. My mom bought me a blue box when I was 5. Getting to the suspense, the earliest memories I have are with my brother. I remember the day they got him from the hospital. The little tyke is taller than me now and beats me at chess :). He was placed in a blue cradle. Even I was raised in the same blue cradle. I spent my infancy and my early childhood with that cradle. This has resulted me to associate blue with sense of security and joy. It’s multiplied over two decades and It’s vast influence affects me even today. Being with things associated with blue gives me a sense of security.

Knowing this does not change my fascination towards it nor does it belittle the things that I already like. It gives parity to how I perceive the world. I seem to have learnt more about myself by this introspection. I can associate it better with crops. Some start off very well because of the right initial conditions like soil, rain or season but have to be grown with care eventually. Objects with blue provided me quick foundations but the entire structure had to be built with toil.

The human mind is a very sensitive to the senses. We don’t pay attention to them consciously but we are for the most part slaves to the subconscious mind which is ever observant. Events associated with great deal of emotion leave a mark behind. E.g monsters under the bed or fear of the dark. Exploring them eventually gives a better control over our lives and provides solace. 

Magicians try to attack people by taking them to a ground state with their scripted lines and planting hypnotic suggestions. The fundamental idea is our extreme points in life leave a mark and continue to influence us later. A smart magician/therapist uses this to his/her advantage and influences the subject based on will. 

Thank you for reading, I enjoyed writing this article, I pondered on this for a while like a case and finally got to the ending. I understood myself better by deducing this small fact. I hope you enjoyed reading it.

Have a nice day and Happy Holi again

P.S the blog has a blue theme 😛

Regards

Vikram Kamath