Colourfully black and white

'What would you like to see in glorious colour', was one of the question I read somewhere. It was the tagline for a blogging competition asking the readers to suggest things that are black and white and ones which they would like to see in colour. Intrigued and puzzled – my mind tried to visualize all the ‘possible’ black and white’ things that exist in the world. I even googled on the net to find out what all black and white things that existed. I came across some animals like zebras, elephants, dolphins, penguins which are blessed with black and white colour, whilst other animals have been assigned a different colour for each one. Images of the yin yang too flashed on the screen. Also some images of beautiful black and white photography with landscapes and portraits made their presence felt.

Glancing through all the images, I tried to figure out which one of these would look great in colour. Recollecting all the good old movies, I tried to scratch my head to remember all the amazing movies being made in black and white. From Satyajit Ray to Billy Wilder’s films – a long list of memorable classics ran through my mind. My imaginative mind started looking at most of these in its colourful avatars. I couldn’t definitively stumble upon one movie which I could single out to be made in colour.

I realized one fact in my process of this research that – each colour is unique and has its own associative value. The way each thing has its own definite value and characteristic – it should  not be replaced with anything else. As being original has a charm of its own – a remixed version doesn’t always garner attention.

Emphasizing on this realization I questioned myself – how would a multi colour stripped zebra will look like? How will a red and white dolphin seem while swimming ,a chess board has its identity because of the use of two colours. Will a colourful version of black and white classic like ‘Chalti ka naam gadi’ create any difference? The answer was a strict no. I realized that as much as each thing has its definitive value – each colour too has its purpose. Why do we need to add colour to every thing black or white? Why can’t it have its own appeal? I believe all the black and white things do have their own magic which makes them stand apart from the colourful counterparts. Because of this fact, there are attempts to make colourful objects seem black and white.

Photographers purposely shoot some objects in black and white, most of the cameras come with a black and white mode. Being black and white shouldn’t be considered passé, it is sometimes the ‘in-thing’. Our printers too come up with ‘black and white’ versions, to ‘save colour’.

A right colour at right time in right proportion makes the difference. Instead of saying black and white – one should say its colourfully black and white.

P.S - The post is a part of a blogging competition topic