Cornflower Blue

Has it ever happened to you that something clicks into place when you least expect it? I've never had a favourite colour. I've had phases of Ferrari red, emerald green and jet black but somehow never settled on one. As a child, when someone asked me what my favourite colour is, i would be in a downright fix. Most others my age would have an answer ready pit-pat but i couldn't do it and I covered it up. As i grew older, I put it down to the fact that I'm nota visual person and also to my inability to commit to things. I slowly accepted that i was a fencesitter and would never have a favourite colour. On a recent flight (2022) from Hyderabad to Bombay i was mindlessly staring out the window listening to NU's Man O To, when it dawned on me...

My favourite colour was indeed the one i was looking at right then - the exact hue of the sky at 20,000 feet at noon in tropical India just after summer solstice. It's not a vibrant deep blue, not periwinkle blue, but a mildly watery and almost pastel blue, that is called Cornflower Blue. A tiny section of the sky had that exact hue that morning. A few degrees above and below, the colour transformed into something i definitely didn't find as alluring as this one. It's not that I've never seen that colour before in my life. But it's today that i got to know that this one's my favourite.