Green

Green is the most salient colour of our land. It appears in numerous varieties and has influenced our lives, our thinking, our emotions and our creativity from time immemorial. Our poets, story-tellers, painters, singers and photographers have all partaken from this green splendour. Unlike the Eskimos who have numerous words for snow, Bangla and its dialects have a small set of words for green. One of these, in Sylheti, is “kochua” – referring to the colour of kochupata.Green is also one of the three   primary colours, the others being red and blue. That means any colour can be made by mixing appropriate amounts of green, red and blue; it also means there is a little bit of green in almost all colours that we see. When we look at something, the eye passes this visual information to the brain which processes and recognizes the scene; green contributes the lion’s share of information passed to the brain. Put another way, 60% of the information of any scene comes from green, the other 40% from red and blue.Green plays an important role in nature because it is the colour of   chlorophyll, the substance in all plants and grass that converts the sun’s energy into plant food and changes carbon dioxide to oxygen. But today, the  popular meaning of green has come to encompass everything friendly to nature and ecology. This meaning has extended to all spheres of language and increasingly connotes the fragility of our planet and our efforts to save it from destruction. Green denotes not just beauty but our attempts to save the earth from ourselves.But has green always enjoyed this overarching exalted status? Note that humans have appreciated the beauty of flowers and birds for centuries. So much so that in psychology, not  appreciating and enjoying flowers is considered a sign of clinical        depression. But green has not been a symbol of beauty in historical times. For example, forests and mountains were    considered hostile places in the    imagination of our forefathers. In any number of fairy tales – recall Hansel and Gretel – the green, dark forest hides dangers, demons and death.Green has other meanings, too. For example, it is tied to envy, as in “When Mrs. Jones saw her neighbour’s new car, she turned green with envy.” If someone appears sick or nauseous, we say they are looking green. Being the colour of the American dollar bill, green is also linked with money. And in the land of science fiction, aliens are often “little green men.”Be that as it may, there is something extraordinary about the green we see in the Bangladesh countryside. It soothes me with its infinite variations, its  richness and its calming effect       (perhaps because of a subconscious association with food.) In particular, the sublime green of our rainy season reminds me of life’s continuous renewal, and how generous and    forgiving our planet is and how urgent it is we take every step to save it.