The Color Red
In a small village in Nepal, the author discovers an astonishingly simple fact:
a person’s stature can rise by giving more while having less By BARBARA KINGSOLVER
A JO YOUS
OCCASION
Menuka
Poudel’s
mother-in-law dusts her
with red teeka
powder, an
adornment
previously
forbidden
to widows
young and
old. Below:
Barbara
Kingsolver.
“Red is my color,” I used to say. Just because I liked it best,
I owned it. How many other things have I claimed as mine so eas-
ily? Whistling and sunshine, life and liberty. Things that can be
lost. For most of us, life presents itself as a steady progress toward
owning more, but having less. Vision, acuity, even walking—one
bad fall taught me that was
only a gift on loan.Then my
broken leg healed and walking
was mine again.
But getting older means the breaks
will come harder. I know this. I’m a
professional observer, reporting on
that inevitable human progress: the
endless hungers for more, the having
less. I see how age and loss can bring
a temptation to hold harder to the
privileges that remain. The customs
of hoarding happiness infect every
culture, as the powerful find ways to
bar the weak or the young. I want to
believe the cycle can be broken. I want
to get old and give things away.
“Red is my color,” I used to say and
never will again, because of a beautiful,
spirited girl named Menuka Poudel.
We met in a village in lowland Nepal
where red was everywhere: in flow-
ering hedges, women’s saris, and the
teeka powder that dusts their hair and
dots their foreheads as the symbol of
marriage. I was there on a ceremo-
nial day, so poinsettias in jars lined
the dusty road, blazing against the
mud-brick houses. I wore a red ban-
danna against the fierce lowland sun.
I’d come as a journalist investigating
women’s development projects. This
trip marked my 25th anniversary as
a professional writer, and I felt shad-
owed by the girl I used to be, the one
who took up her pen believing people
would behave humanely if only they
knew the whole story.
“Red is my color,” I used to say and
never will again, because of a beautiful,
spirited girl named Menuka Poudel.
