A Splash of Colour

I occasionally come across a clip on social media showing colour blind people trying on colour correction glasses and seeing their visual world transform from hues of greys into an explosion of brilliant colours. Considering that seeing the world as it truly is, for the first time, their reactions are pretty overwhelming.

But how do we know what the world actually looks like?

What if the actual world is nothing but different shades of grey and it is the defect in our visual abilities that make us see it in all these different colours?

What if the colour blind people are the visually correct people and the rest are the ones with defect?

We have based our assumption on the fact that since MOST of the population can see colour than most of us must be right.

But are we right?

I long ago realized that the visual ability of human beings is very limited. It probably dawned on me during a game I used to play with myself when I was younger, where I would try to think up of a colour that no one had ever seen.

I could never do it.

Whatever shade or hue that I managed to conjure up in my mind would always be a combination of an existing colour that we already know of. That is when I realized that our vision is confined inside the Rainbow nicknamed VIBGYOR (Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red): the optical spectrum visible to the human eye.

The ultra and infra colours that exist beyond this spectrum are invisible to us, yet certain species other than humans can see them.

That would probably mean that certain animals, birds and insects that can see colours beyond the range that we can see them are the ones with correct vision and we, the human race are collectively the colour blind ones?

Somehow, I don’t think that is how it is.

Just because somebody is not able to see things the way the rest see it does not mean that that somebody has a defect in their vision. It just means that they have a different way of seeing things than the rest.

If one is unable to see or even visualize something that is visible to another doesn’t mean that that something is not there or that it does not exit. It just means that either one has not been given the ability to see it or more likely, one is not opening up his or her mind enough to be able to see it.

Needless to say, I am no longer talking about seeing colours only.

It is good to have your own point of view but it is even better to be able to see things from another’s.

Those who cannot do this are the truly blind ones.

Movenpick Petra

I have always been fond of those novels that take place in exotic locations. Novels like Agatha Christie's “Murder in Mesopotemia” and “They came to Baghdad” or M.M.Kaye's whodunits set in equally colorful locations. For me the backdrop is as exciting as the story itself possibly because such surroundings do not exist anymore. How routine and ordinary life sometimes feels when compared to the fantastic world found inside of books.

That is why I loved staying at Movenpick Petra so much. Form the moment I walked into that beautiful hotel I felt like had wandered back in history right into the setting of one of my ever favourite novels. Admittedly the hotel staff was also one of the better trained ones that make you feel welcome from the moment you set your foot inside the building but it was the overall environment that completely won me over.

Making the experience even better, there was the daily chocolate hour at the hotel.

Delicately and beautifully crafted chocolate delights were placed in the main lobby between 4 to 5 pm every day. Any one passing through the lobby could help oneself to however many chocolates as one wished to have. Also in the lobby and unlike the chocolates, not confined to a mere one hour, but present throughout the day was the coffee guy. At least that is what I called him. He had an entire table laden with all sorts of coffee beans from which he prepared his fresh brew for anyone who cared to have it. The coffee was served as shots in tiny paper cups accompanied by dates larger in size then the coffee shot itself. Though not a particular fan of coffee shots myself, I must confess that the combination of the soft moist dates along with coffee was one of the best I have ever had.

The perks and delight offered by the hotel aside, like I said before, it was the overall ambience of the place that got me. For two days I lived inside what I felt like was a place right out of novel in some early twentieth century Arabian setting. 

Off to College

The day after is always the hardest.
When you go into their rooms to pick up the clutter they have left behind in a hurry, when you take the battery out of the AC remote because you know it is not going to be used for some time.
Every time you walk past their rooms, you expect them to be inside and for a second, just a brief significant second something grips at your heart to know that they are not. Slowly you acclimatise yourself to the pain and learn to ignore the empty rooms as you walk past them.
The best part is finding their stuff in the clean laundry pile days after they have left. Discovery of each piece of clothing neatly pressed and folded brings a joy of its own and putting it back into its respective closet and cupboard is a sign that they may not be here now but they will be back soon enough.
But the day after is always the hardest.