My Inverted Rainbow

My Inverted Rainbow

–Utkarsh Amitabh

My grandmother introduced me to the world of colors when I was in second grade. Every afternoon she sat by my side and together we colored the newspaper cartoons with color pastels. Soon after that, she read out my favorite folk tales and put me to sleep before I went out to play.  Grandma tells me that as a kid, I loved painting the apple blue, the forest red and the sky green.

I distinctly remember having a big diamond shaped prism. I would sit by the window, let the sunlight pass through it, and jump in joy as the spectrum of colors inverted on the lavender wall in the living room. I felt thrilled on having inverted the rainbow. This was my rainbow – I had reversed the order, and there was no compulsion to set it “right”. Creative distortions fascinated me and the…