Lakshmi Narayan

There was once a gori chokri who despised everything dark to such an extent that she refused to step out at night and slept with the lights on. She hated ravens and crows because of their colour and even decided to mehendi her hair a bright orange to hide its rosewood hue.

She wore green coloured contacts to hide her coffee brown eyes, loathed the Little Black Dress even though it was in vogue and preferred to gad about in gaudy ghagra-tops. She spurned her dusky cousins and mocked them as sooty. She insisted on replacing the beloved family steel grey car for a flashy fire engine red eyesore.

Things would have gone on like this forever but for a traumatic event, where she went completely blind. “You could get your sight back. Miracles do happen,” said the doctor, with little hope in his voice.

She found herself in a windowless dungeon where she couldn’t tell night from day. She had to be aided by attendants whose complexions, she had no idea, were dark or fair. Since she could no longer drive, her friends, who felt sorry for her, took her out for rides, where she was unaware of the shade of their vehicle.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she began to distinguish between night and day. The twitter of the birds, the warm rays of the sun, told her it was morning. But it made no difference to her. Her life, as far as she was concerned, had become a moonless night that went on interminably.

But with the consistent encouragement of her friends and relatives, she began taking baby steps on her own, as she moved around the house. Even as one sense was stolen from her, her other senses — of smell, touch, taste and hearing — were gradually becoming sharper.

With this developed her sixth sense — that of differentiating between the real and the fake. She could instinctively guess who was lying and who was not. Who was cheating and who was not. Who was deceiving and who was not. Who was sincere and who was not.

She now valued a person not for his or her shade but because of who they were. She had long discarded her tinted lenses and her hennaed hair had grown back to its original inky mane. This time around, she preferred to keep it in its natural state.

With the heightening of the senses also came the knowledge that black was beautiful, in its own way. Night had been created by the Maker to rest and recharge oneself. She understood that Light is the present and the past, where everything is already exposed. Dark is the future — exciting, unexplored, undiscovered, exhilarating, inviting, beckoning, challenging, perhaps even dangerous. But nevertheless, something to look forward to.

Then marvel of marvels! The unthought-of happened. She could see! As she raised her face to the morning sun, she sent up a heartfelt thanks to the Maker. But now she was a changed person. She knew the importance of light and dark and accepted both with gratitude.

Light energizes us. Darkness calms us down.
This is Nature’s way of balancing yin and yang.q

(Excerpted from Fables from Beyond, Authors Upront, 2020)

Journalist, author and animal activist Lakshmi Narayan is a former assistant editor of Femina and former editor of Eve’s Weekly & Flair