Indigo is defined as a dark purplish blue.

The word reminds me of, nope, not the airlines with the same name, but the days of the fountain pen. That had me stymied for a while. Why was my mind throwing up images of a fountain pen scratching and scrawling on paper? Had I used an Indigo colored ink for writing? But Royal Blue ink is what comes to mind. Could it be that the lesson that touched on Indigo was taught in class round about the time I qualified to use the fountain pen?

‘Qualifying to use the fountain pen’ brings to mind some amusing thoughts. The elders of the day decried the use of fountain pen (in their words) ‘at such an early age’. It will spoil the handwriting of the children, they said in unison and with the right amount of disdain writ large on their collective sanctimonious faces. Of course they had forgotten that THEIR parents had said much the same when their generation switched from the slate and slate pencil to paper and pencil. Yawn. It is really amazing how humans cannot see their own stupidity in action, repeating the same things over generations, only changing the object complained against.

Next it was the turn of the ball point pen and the same old outcry about handwriting taking a beating. I am from a generation that was NOT allowed to write exams with ball-point pens in college. Luckily all that changed, as it ALWAYS will. Whosoever it may be who wants the world to freeze at a particular point in time, it NEVER EVER happens. Right now those who consider themselves “old” have shifted their self-righteousness to other things, like computers and how the coming generations are going to forget writing, blah, blah, blah, sob, sob, sob, some more blah, blah, blah…. Do you think the humans who got off trees and started walking on land heard this sort of thing from their tree-loving elders? 

Sigh, this is a topic that needs a blog all to itself, so I will leave it for another day. And having infamously digressed, as is my wont, let me drag myself back to the topic at hand, Indigo.

I first heard of Indigo when the Social Studies teacher touched upon the topic of Indigo Revolt of 1859 in Bengal, and told us in passing that the name was derived from the indigo plant from which the indigo dye is made. It seemed there was a huge market for it in Europe those days and the planters (British) forced the poor Indian peasants to plant indigo instead of even food crops. The farmers were lent money at high interest and paid just a meagre fraction of the market price. Some things never change even in the present, eh? Anyway having reached the end of their tether the farmers revolted, and that revolt is said to be the forerunner of later non-violent revolts. (Read more at Wiki).

Of course, that lesson did not make clear what the color itself was. After all, dark blue covers a lot of different shades. Which exactly was Indigo? Having chosen to write about the different colors of the rainbow for the Write Tribe Festival of Words, I decided to find the answer once and for all, and did a quick Google search. And lo behold, I found I had landed myself in even more of a muddle. There is Bright Indigo, Electric Indigo, Denim, Indigo dye and more…!  Suffice to say that I am going to be satisfied with Indigo being a deep and bright color close to Blue in the color wheel.

Here is another interesting fact about the color: It is considered a color of intuition and perception. It is supposed to aid concentration during introspection and meditation. So next time surround yourself with Indigo when you  are on that inner journey. Believe it or not, the picture you see above is an Indigo colored sari I unearthed from my neglected and meagre collection. I had forgotten about its existence. But at least it came in handy for Indigo Day.

I am taking part in 

The Write Tribe Festival of Words 1st – 7th September 2013.