Grayscale by Anya Ramamurthy {Inklings Book Contest 2022 Finalist}

Today we are featuring Inklings Book Contest 2022 finalist Anya Ramamurthy. Anya finished 5th grade this past school year and wrote a story called “Grayscale.” Our judge had to say this about Anya’s story, “The descriptive language about the gray world helps the reader imagine what the world would be like without color and experiencing color for the first time.” Enjoy!

GRAYSCALE
By Anya Ramamurthy

Sunaila stared out the window and sighed. It was a gray, bare day, and she was bored. She didn’t even feel like drawing, which she loved doing. She stared blankly at a pigeon flying in the sky, one of the last remaining species on Earth. All others had gone extinct, and all the amazing animals she had read about in books had disappeared. Sunaila had nothing to do, on this gray day of 2050.  But she could go into the attic. She often looked for something with color up there.

Color was something that nobody really talked about. Sunaila’s grandparents had told her all about it, though. Back when they were not much older than her, there were things called rainbows with strange colors like red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Her grandmother told Sunaila how these colors disappeared. They lost the greens of the forests first due to droughts and fire, then the blues of the sky as climate change worsened. All the other colors soon followed. Then the animals departed, because their picturesque habitats were gone. 

Her grandparents had told her about colorful art supplies with vibrant shades. You could draw with the pencils, giving life to a black and white drawing. There were substances called paints, and paint brushes that you could use to spread these paints. They could draw and color what they saw around them. They could capture its existence on paper. Not many people drew now. What was the point? Everything was in black and white and gray. Sunaila longed to get a glimpse of these colors, but now everything was either black, white, or somewhere on the grayscale because the world had changed massively without color. There wasn’t even a glimmer of blue in the sky as her grandparents described, even when the sun was shining its brightest. The world was drab and gray, and it seemed as if the people were, too. 

Sunaila climbed the rope ladder up to the attic. She scanned the room and then went to settle herself in an armchair. She leaned back against the cushioned seat and inhaled the musty smell of the attic. The attic always made her feel better. Her attic always had clean air, unlike most places in the city. She slowly got up to explore a chest that she had never looked in before. She fiddled with the latch until the chest popped open. In it were clothes, all bleached and faded. As she put them back, she noticed something. The bottom of the chest was a bit slanted. She dropped to her knees and peered down at the bottom of the chest. It looked uneven, so she knocked on the bottom of the chest. It moved just a little bit, enough for her to know that it was a false bottom. She carefully removed the false bottom. 

Then, Sunaila was surprised as she lifted out items, a thick pad of paper, a big pack of colored pencils, and a few paintings. They all glowed, unlike the drab environment they occupied. They seemed magical. She blinked several times to see if it was for real. She opened the pack of colored pencils, and a whole rainbow appeared before her.  She picked up an especially captivating color and read the label. “Violet,” it said. She vaguely recognized the name from when her grandparents described colors. Didn’t they say it was also the name of a flower? Sunaila thought. She instinctively grasped her fingers around it, air-drawing an intricate pattern.

“Whoa,” she whispered, stroking the smooth lacquer of the pencil. “It’s like what I always dreamed of!” Sunaila let out a quiet breath of amazement. Once she was finished reading all the labels of the colors, she went back to the armchair with the pad of paper and pencils, and began to draw. 

Drawing came naturally to her. She just drew whatever was in her mind. Right now, she wanted to draw a fire hydrant. Her grandparents told her that they used to be bright red, so she began drawing them with the colored pencil that said “red.” It seemed like because of the colors, her drawing of a fire hydrant was one of the best drawings she had ever made. Then, an inner voice told her to leave it at a real fire hydrant. 

“Why would I leave it at a fire hydrant?” Sunaila said aloud. “Oh well. It’s the only place I can think of, so I might as well do it. Just follow my intuition.”

“Mom, I’m biking to the library downtown, okay?” Sunaila called as she folded the fire hydrant drawing into her pocket. 

“That’s fine. Just be home in time for dinner,” her mom called back. 

As Sunaila set off downtown, she thought, What’s going to happen? Will anyone see me? Will anyone think I’m crazy?

She stopped at the gray fire hydrant by the town library. The drawing felt like a rock in her pocket, weighing her down. She tried to be discreet by pretending to tinker with her bike when she was really slipping the drawing in a small niche in the fire hydrant. No one was around to watch her. Thank goodness nobody saw me. They would have been shocked if they had seen the drawing, Sunaila thought. No one of her generation had seen colored artwork, and most of the elders could barely remember it.

The next day, she returned to see a crowd gathered around the fire hydrant. She slipped through the crowd and glanced around. There it was–the fire hydrant. The only strange thing about it was that it was red. A bright, vibrant, beautiful red that she had never seen before!  She shook her head in disbelief. The drawing was gone. 

That afternoon, Sunaila worked on another drawing. She hoped that what she had done to the fire hydrant, she could do again–bring color to other things.  This drawing was of the library, one of her favorite places to draw because it had amazing architecture. She imagined what the library might look like with color, using ideas from an old book. The walls would be brick-red, and the roof was gray stone. Once she was finished, she hopped on her bike and set off. 

Just as Sunaila was slipping her drawing behind a potted plant, a sharp voice startled her.

“What are you doing? The library’s closed today!” Sunaila swiveled around to find a girl about her age.

 “And what exactly is that?” said the stranger, pointing to the drawing. 

“Who-who are you?” Sunaila stammered, as she tried to hide her drawing. 

“I’m Devon,” the girl said. “I saw you the other day near the fire hydrant. I knew there was something strange about you. And I volunteer at the library, so I know that you’re not supposed to be here,” Devon added.

“Okay, okay! Since you already found out, I’ll have to show you the secret,” Sunaila said as she started unfolding her drawing.

“Whoa. You drew that? It’s so… colorful! Anyway, what’s your secret?” Devon leaned in, already intrigued.  

The next afternoon, the doorbell rang. Sunaila eagerly jumped up to get the door. It had to be Devon. She had invited Devon over. It turned out that they were both curious about color, and they both liked art. Devon too had mysteriously discovered art supplies, but she hadn’t used them yet.

Sunaila worried, What if Devon told somebody else about the picture? Would they think I’m a witch? How can I trust her not to get me in trouble?

Once she spent time with Devon, she relaxed.

Sunaila told Devon, “I should show you exactly where I found my coloring tools!”

“And I’ll tell you where I found my art supplies,” Devon replied. 

“How did you find your art supplies?” Sunaila asked Devon. 

“Well, one day, about a year ago, I was making a garden. I was digging to put some seeds in the soil when my shovel hit something hard. It made a clunk, like a metal box. It was a time capsule from 50 years ago. Inside I found art supplies with a letter. It was freakishly real, from 2023. The author wrote about losing color in nature. People losing appreciation for nature.” Devon sighed. “I’ve barely used the art materials until now. And what a perfect occasion!” 

Sunaila and Devon grinned at each other, knowing that they would become a team, working to spread color.

 Sunaila thought about what Devon had said about the letter. Devon and I are the next generation, the ones who don’t have color, and probably wouldn’t for the rest of our lives. Have we lost the ability to see color? Had our parents stopped seeing color altogether? When people stopped appreciating color, had nature evolved into grayscale? Was it all human-made? While they were drawing, she thought of another idea.

 “Hey Devon, I just thought of an idea!” Sunaila said, her brain surging. “We could pool our art supplies and show others how to color art! We could color all of downtown!”

“That way, the color could spread faster!” explained Devon.

“It could even spread to the whole world!” Sunaila exclaimed. “We could bring nature back! Devon, we could make nature return!”

A few days later, Sunaila was back up in her attic. She was looking for inspiration for something to draw when she decided to look in the chest again. To her amazement, there were three new art cases in the false bottom! It’s almost like somebody wants me to have the cases because they know my mission! Sunaila thought in astonishment.  Could it have been ghosts? Or a person who knows my secret? Someone from the past was helping her. It’s like our ancestors planned for this! She and Devon made a plan to teach a color class at the library and they posted flyers around town.

The following week, Sunaila was met with chatter as she stepped into the library. She looked around. So many people, of all ages, were here! Everyone had seen the flyers she and Devon had put up! They all sat at various tables, their faces lit with eagerness

“My grandma told me about her mother having a whole garden of colorful flowers!” one lady said. 

“We could bring forests back!” one boy said cheerfully.

“I don’t have to draw with graphite anymore!” a girl exclaimed.

Sunaila opened all the art cases, and called out,  “Let’s get ready to color the world!” 

One day, a few months after many classes, Sunaila stepped outside the library to study the sky. It was a cloudless day, and the sky was bright blue. She remembered one of her color-spreading lessons. She had shown everyone all the blues. Navy, indigo, cloud blue, teal, cobalt. Sunaila had told them about all the blues, and how the sky had once been blue. She read them descriptions from books.

“Listen to this line of Willowgreen. “The bright blue sky was promising,  and faced a whole new world. It was a blank canvas waiting to be painted.” Sunaila had read. “Now that’s how you want your drawings to look! We all need to spread this color. Tell your family! Tell your friends!” The color jumped from place to place as people told their friends, who told their friends to draw and paint too.  Everyone’s senses were waking up. The world had been colorblind, and now their vision was waking up. Nature was blooming. 

Their art activities continued. Sunaila brought in flowers for everyone to draw. Everyone oohed and ahhed over the beautiful colors. It was the animals who really found it first. The animals began to return. First, the insects to the plants, and then their friends, the bees and butterflies. People marveled over the plants and beautiful insects. More birds flew through the skies. The bugs flocked around the newly colored flowers. Pigeons grouped around trees. The sky shone as its vibrant colors brightened, and the most polluted areas seemed a little bit cleaner.  

“Go home with your colorful drawing and put it in a place where color demands itself,” Sunaila instructed her group each time they came.

  Soon, color was spreading to the whole world. People were using their imaginations to paint and color the world. Color was bringing back what two generations had lost. Sunaila remembered a line from one of her art books as she gazed up at the sky. In the words of painter David Hockney, she whispered,

“I prefer living in color.” As she said the quote, Sunaila felt alive. Because she really did prefer to live in color. Alive, like she never had been before. And it was all because of color.