I was still in my thirties when I noticed the first streaks of grey. Being a secret dyed in the wool brunette fan, (my childhood heroine of fiction being richly auburn), I was undismayed. Here was the chance to bid goodbye to boring black and bask in the glory of chestnut curls. The many shades of brown beckoned.
The supermarket shelves beguiled me with images of glossy curls and glossier descriptions. The mahogany, hazel and walnut browns made me pause in their shade, the golden and copper browns glowed, the cinnamon and chocolate browns made me drool. I roamed, lost in the aisle of browns, looking for my one true brown.
dyed in brown
I started my journey with the darkest brown. At first rinse, it looked black. A couple of washes later, it turned into a nice, natural, comfortable brown. Happiness. Which, like all happiness, was of a fleeting nature. A few more washes, and it resembled a medium brown. A distinct yellowish hue then crept in which might have been a sandy brown. Or was it a tawny brown?
By the fifth week my erstwhile crowning glory resembled an arid landscape of bleached browns. At six weeks, I was back at the parlour. And there I was, shackled to my brown locks, my self-confidence rising and plummeting with each transition from a richly nourished to a dull marasmic brown. It was many long years before I could break free and emerge a victorious grey!
But that’s another story.
A study in brown
Rather prosaically, brown is a composite colour produced by a mixture of orange (itself a composite colour) and black. However, add an extra dollop of yellow or a pinch of red, a dash of grey or a bolt of green and you are faced with mind-boggling array of browns that swallow you in their polychromatic depths. It was with a grateful sigh that I greeted the familiar beige, coffee and tan; met the lesser-known burnt umber, ochre and russet and the exotic taupe, bistre and smoky topaz.
Along the way I discovered nuggets of trivia. That ‘brown‘ and ‘beaver‘ are long-lost cousins in the etymological world. The word for brown in many languages often comes from food and beverages: kafé in Greek, coklat in Malay! That khaki, from the Persian/Urdu word for ‘dust’ was born of necessity in Colonial India.
Brownscape
As I studied the many shades of brown, I realised that I was surrounded by all things brown and beautiful.
The soil that nourished all things living. The sturdy brown trunks of the trees, each a different hue and texture. The many creatures great and small including the little brown birds that built brown twig-and-straw nests in their branches. The tough seed pods of the gulmohur and copperpods that sheltered new life within.
Brown was home—the burnt brick walls and terracotta tiles that was shelter, haven, refuge and warmth. At its heart was the warm hearth where golden-brown breads baked and sizzled, promising nourishment, comfort and sustenance. The ripening wheat and the golden honey, the refreshing brew of the morning and the comforting mug of cocoa at night.
There was a wealth of knowledge in the brown crumbling pages of old tomes, and nostalgia in the faded sepia-tinted photographs in family albums!
contrasting browns
Brown was shabby homeliness, rustic simplicity, even poverty. Yet it defined ultimate luxury in the glow of burnished metal, polished wooden floors, buffed leather and Old Masters on the walls.
It was the solid ground beneath our feet and the raging waters of a swollen river. It was the colossal strength of the towering redwood and the faded petals of the dying rose. All that was flamboyant in life met their end in a shrivelled brown, even as the autumn leaves shed their vivid colours to merge with the earth in death.
And into this world of brown, mankind was born. Born to live as one. But divided by the many shades of our brown skin.