Again, it’s my mom who suggested this topic. She was casually passing by when I was thinking what to write about, and she said, “medicinal plants,” but I don’t know enough to write about them. And then she said colors, and I found it just perfect!
Colour.
I am going to write about my favorite color.
Purple.
Rainbow and rainbow flag.
Nimhans and colors
Let me start with my favorite color - it’s black! Of all the colors in the world, why black? (I mean, that question can be asked about any favorite color!) Black, because it’s deep. I don’t see any color being as deep as black. You could claim white consists of all colors - but no, white is too light for me! Black feels like silence that refuses to be empty. It holds everything - grief, desire, power, stillness - and yet asks for nothing in return. Black echoes with silence. When I want to go off the grid, I need some darkness, some comfortable melodies, and stillness. I cannot do without black. It’s not the absence of light for me, it’s the presence of calm.
My second favorite color is purple. Purple resonates with comfort and calm, right? And warm. Yes. Those purple hearts you see under warm posts on Instagram? That's purple. But then, I am a fan of black; how come I am attracted to something as calm and warm as purple? Good question. I wasn’t until recently. Recently, It has been about a year. I had this person in my life - S. How do I define them? Who was he to me? These are difficult questions. Let me just say we were in love. Yes, that sounds just right. We were in so much love that the typical definitions cannot contain us. But then something happened - I attempted suicide. It was serious, and I was put on a ventilator for two days until I started breathing on my own. That affected them. That changed our dynamics. That came up as a destructive factor. They had to leave! They left. And I remained. What has this got to do with purple? Their chosen name was Purple! Once they left, I was unsure what to do with all the purpleness they had brought to my life. It has to be somewhere lest I choke to death. That’s when I got reminded of this notebook with purple pages that my niece had gifted me - I took that out and I started writing in it. They would never get to know about it. They wouldn’t read any of it, but I do keep writing! Purple pages, it is!
And to speak of rainbows - I am not a great fan. I don’t really care as much. It’s a reality. Let it be.
But about rainbow flags - I have a lot to speak about. I am a queer person by all means. I am a genderqueer pan-greysexual polyamorous person! The rainbow flag is supposed to be a symbol of pride, right? Of visibility, of belonging. But for me, it’s also a reminder of how complicated belonging can be. The rainbow is simple and clear on paper: six stripes, each a color, each a meaning. Love, life, healing, sunlight, nature, serenity, spirit - pick your interpretation. But living under it isn’t always so simple. I’ve seen the flag on walls, on pins, on profile pictures - and yes, it’s beautiful, it’s hopeful. But sometimes it feels like a performance of inclusion more than the feeling of it. Like we all gather under the same flag but carry different kinds of pain. The flag waves, but it doesn’t always hold us. It doesn’t erase the microaggressions, the casual erasures, the disbelief of families, the judgment in public spaces.
Still, I can’t deny how much it matters to me. Especially when I was at NIMHANS - when everything felt clinical, sterile, and stripped of identity - seeing a small rainbow sticker on someone’s water bottle or a rainbow pin on a backpack felt grounding. It meant that queerness existed even in spaces of illness, even in spaces that tried to regulate, erase, or control every part of identity. Even when I was alone, when I felt that my body and my desires were a problem to be managed, those colors reminded me that my existence wasn’t a mistake.
And the rainbow flag is not just a decoration; it is a survival. It is resistance. It is a quiet but unignorable refusal to hide. For someone like me, who moves in a world that constantly tries to contain identity, that flag feels like the possibility of breathing freely. Each stripe is a reminder of joy, but also of struggle. There’s history embedded in it - decades of fight, of violence faced, of love claimed. When I see it, I don’t just see a flag; I see memory, persistence, and refusal.
Yet I know it is not perfect. No flag is perfect. It cannot represent all experiences. Voices are missing, histories erased, identities flattened. And even within queer spaces, the flag can become a marker of performance, a shorthand for being “acceptable.” But still, for me, the rainbow flag is sacred in its imperfection. It tells me: your queerness exists. Your existence matters. Even when the world wants to label you, erase you, or contain you - even then - you are seen.
Okay, 888 words. My word limit is 800-1000.
Let me quickly talk about NIMHANS and its colors as well. I was admitted there for over two months. They changed bedsheets every day. It was a weekly color chart. It was fun.
I think I’ll call it a day there!
Take care, hooman!