Holi celebration is often called the festival of colours. One of the key attractions of the festivities is playful spraying of coloured water on others and smearing faces of each other with coloured powder. Holi symbolizes the triumph of good over evil and the divine love between Krishna and Radha.

It also marks the end of winter and the beginning of spring. As an artist, I love colours and as a physicist I wonder why we can “see” only a narrow range of the entire electromagnetic spectrum. I often wonder what living in a black and white world would be like if there were no colour. Can we still celebrate Holi in such a world? From a cosmic point of view, sunlight will still be white, and nights will be pitch black. What about our dayto-day activities? Consider all useful functions that a society needs to do to sustain its existence. Our day starts with kids going to school to learn how to read, write and do math. They use paper and pen/pencil; teachers use chalk on blackboards.

Clearly those activities remain unaffected. The working parents go to their workplaces and deal with accounting ledgers, engineering drawings, architectural plans, typing memos and reports, Xrays and other medical images etc., once again items that involve only black and white. We can certainly continue shopping for all merchandise because paying for the items typically involves scanning a barcode and swiping a credit card, neither one of which requires colour. For our entertainment, we will have to rely on black and white televisions and movies. While that may seem unthinkable to the younger generation, this was how we were entertained sixty or so years ago.

There will be no problem playing chess, checkers, or doing crossword puzzles. If you want to go outdoors, carry a soccer ball which is black and white. Traveling by car will be no different because the streets will look the same along with “zebra crossings”. There will be no difference in appearances of food items like Oreo cookies, milk, Coca-Cola, rice and rohu fish. If we go to the zoo, many animal species will look the same. These include pandas, zebras, white tigers, elephants, bears, alligators, killer whales (Orca), skunks, penguins, lemurs, ostriches, many snakes, bird and fish species etc. We won’t be able to paint in colour, but we can still do images in black and white and pencil sketches. Graphic artists can continue doing exotic patterns a la M. C. Escher. We will be able to wave a white flag to surrender and release white doves during wartime. Most of us dream in black and white and we can sleep just like before.

Also, remember all our other senses are still active as before; we can listen to music and converse, taste food, smell perfumes and get excited by human touch. There will be no problem in playing the piano, drums or guitars. In practical applications where colour is key, such as traffic lights and national flags, colours can be replaced by unique black and white symbols and patterns. So, who will suffer from a lack of colour? The answer: creative, romantic and emotional people. Most romantic items including flowers, rainbows, balloons, red wines, sunrises and sunsets, butterflies and fall colours will immediately lose their appeal. Fashion designers who design colourful costumes for fashion models and women, in general, will suffer major financial losses. Companies selling colour printers and cameras will go out of business.

Artists, poets and photographers will be without anything to inspire them. Colour also triggers emotions. There is an entire area of Colour Psychology that studies the impact of colour on how we feel and our behaviour patterns. For example, red/yellow colour invokes passion, warmth if not anger while blue/green colours are conducive to peace and calmness. We may become more mechanical and robotic without colour. Think of R2D2, the robot from the Star Wars movies which is in black and white. A black and white world means no joy, no hope, no emotions, no creative energy – a depressing environment; no wonder here is no colour in prisons. There will be minor inconveniences. No more colourful bar charts or pie charts in presentations and colour coding.

No showing of yellow cards during soccer matches. No use of colour in uniforms to distinguish affiliations. Santa suits will no longer be red. We will have to identify fruits by their shapes. Chameleons will no longer be able to hide. Since the colour of our hair and eyes will now appear in black and white, perhaps our concept of beauty might change. Identification of various organs and veins during critical surgery can become an issue if the surgeon cannot distinguish between different pieces because of lack of colour. They will need to rely on other methods of identification – by size, shape and structure. To summarize, it seems that all the left-brained activities will be unaffected if we turn off colour. Lack of colour will affect emotions and creativity of right-brained people. I believe that God gave the senses of colour in our eyes only over a certain range of wavelengths so that we can appreciate the impact of colour in our life; we will certainly survive but realize that we need colour to feel Him.

God can be achieved through creativity and emotions. At the same time, he did not want to present all the colours because he did not want to convert this earth into a heaven. It is like serving food samples before the main dinner; people are enticed by the taste of the sample and then make an effort to attend the dinner. There will be a new twist to the black and white segregation based on skin colour. We will have to classify people according to the shade of gray their skin colour belongs to. This could be more subtle and less divisive. Colour blindness will no longer be a source of embarrassment. Coming back to the Holi festival, we will still be able to celebrate it to some extent. We can light a bonfire the night before to symbolize “Holika Dahan”.

We can still mark the end of winter, symbolized by white snow, and the beginning of spring indicated by dark soil and dark leaves on the trees. We can still express joy at the triumph of good over evil and portray an image of union between Krishna and Radha because Krishna is dark-complexioned, and Radha is fair. The story in mythology goes that Krishna was worried about his complexion being unattractive to Radha. His mother, Yashoda suggested that he paint Radha’s face with color. He did exactly that and Radha fell in love with him. This is a metaphor for colour bringing one closer to God. In a black and white world, we will not get any inspiration to seek out God; we may pretend to celebrate Holi, but it would be a Godless event. The Holi celebration tells us that colour is the key to achieving God and experiencing His power.

(The writer, a physicist who worked in industry and academia, is a Bengali settled in America.)