as we find ourselves
coddled at home,
feeling blue
amidst this chaos,
the green secretly flourishes.
my friend tells me a funny story
of a certain minister on a planet in a faraway galaxy
who put a ban on the color green
because his friends from earth called it
a color of hate and terrorism on social media
no wait, in fact he introduced a law
in their parliament of fools
to stop the color from existing in his country
every house must be stripped of green color
all citizens must not wear green at public places
(neither at home, nor in their dreams)
127 people were hanged to death
and a whole town was persecuted
years after he died, his grave turned white
grasses refuse to grow on it
flowers turned around in disdain
but the sexton did not give up
he sowed the grave with a thin layer of seeds
and watered them so much that a bunch of delilah bloomed
ironic that after the minister's death
the sexton had never worn anything other than green
in another article shared by a friend on twitter,
i find a link to a quiz
and i block the friend instantly
because it says,
find out what color is your religion
‘Dissolve in a small quantity of hot water,
6 parts of sulphate of copper,
boil 6 parts of oxide of arsenic with 8 parts of potash,
mix by degrees this hot solution with the first,
agitating continually,
add to it about 3 parts of acetic acid,
and in a few hours there deposes spontaneously at the bottom of the liquor entirely discolored,
a powder of a contexture slightly crystalline, and of a very beautiful,
Emerald green.
I was always drawn to this particular copper (II)-acetoarsenite,
It had some enchantment that i kept reaching for the color in every shop shelf:
Bracelets, bangles, dresses, purses,
I wanted it all in emerald green.
You would probably relate the color to a shiny ring or tiara,
To dense forests and
Algae of the deep sea.
What fascinated me the most about the color is its association with,
Death.
Slowly shutting down every system like tabs closing down on a computer
The arsenic formula of the bright emerald green
Killed thousands in victorian europeans after they painted their walls, nurseries, and dyed their clothing the deathly color.
Babies died in their cribs, ladies covered in mutations from wearing the emerald green garments and one Matilda Scheurer,
who applied the arsenic green dye to fake flowers,
died in a way that horrified the populace in 1861.
She threw up green vomit, the whites of her eyes turned green,
and when she died,
Her last words,
"everything i look at is green." An entire society, knowing the fatalities that would occur using the hazardous dye, still continuing to do so,
Is a satire
As i still reach out to purchase the next emerald green thing i can lay my hands on.
.
(They found alternative ways to reproduce the color)
in the spice gardens of Thekkady
lurk many a childhood story
when children sat with grandfathers,
whose stories of the garden were
more treasured than those of the Great War,
and grandmothers bubbling over
with secret recipes they’d eavesdropped on
when they were little girls.
here, beneath the green boughs are rooted
legends of the hills of Periyar, and the 𝘗𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘺,
hills draped in silks of greens and all spice.
robusta and camellia sinensis have been friends
from even before the first tiger was spotted
nonchalantly sipping water from the river.
in time, there came cardamom and 𝘬𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘪 𝘮𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘬𝘶
gaurs and elephants, clove and 𝘬𝘶𝘳𝘶𝘮𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘬𝘶.
the stories i heard in these gardens
spoke of great warriors and kings,
cutthroats and pillagers, taking back with them
the fruits of the lands. but none, i believe
could take back the exact shade, the matching hue
of the green that abounds.
so, they settled instead for stories that are laced
with the fragrances of cinnamon, sandal, nutmeg
and first flush tea.
