Yellow

Colors

YELLOW is the eldest daughter of light. - Charles Blanc

When I was young, I thought yellow was the most beautiful color on the planet. When Mum would ask me what color fabric to buy at the Divisoria textile mart for my new dress, I'd say, Dilaw. Yellow.

All.The.Time.

I think it was because it was bright.

Joyous.

Sparkling.

Which is why I'm doing 'yellow' today, CBS-style. You know, where the show features just a slice of life. Nothing fancy. Just an image.

So, here goes.

Are you game? 

Let me take you once more on a túk túk ride in the walled city of Old Delhi in India (you may remember one such ride featured ­­­in last year's October entry).

Just visualize it.

An unending, gilded aura of yellow marigolds embracing the lovely, merciless sun pouring through an immense skylight, shaped like a dome. The street is so laden with flowers making the city look like it is outlined in gold, or that it has caught fire. 

Turbaned vendors presiding over huge baskets of flowers are meticulously stringing them into garlands, love charms, and various ornamentation.

Wonderful creatures marigolds are.

Festooned on market stalls and doorways, they nod hello to the swarm of people hurrying by. In front of stores and vehicles, what seem to be hundreds of them reach for the sky, their faces lifted in ecstasy. Their heads quiver over balconies and on building facades, filling shadowed corners with an acrid, clinging scent. 

In the Birla Temple, devotees offer them alongside namaz prayers to gods wearing red lipstick and with multiple arms.

Don't you just love all that shining fluorescence?

That explosion of radiance and orange decorating the road in bright colors with no apparent theme other than vividness.

That amazing light pooling across, swept up like a wizard's broad paintbrush to varnish all the buildings in a beautiful golden haze.

That seeming chaos, brilliant and showy.

It makes me feel as if a tiny seed filled with magic had taken root and is flourishing like infinite blossoms inside of me. 

This sparkling and yellow slice of life.