Cobalt Blue: Of Transcending Love, Loss And Finding Abode In The World Of Literature

The colour blue acted as a recurrent motif throughout the film as evident in the title. It was a silent spectator witnessing all the events of the protagonist Tanay’s life.

Blue is a colour often associated with melancholy but in Tanay’s life blue symbolized both his happiness as well as his tragedy. It served as a metaphor for both love and heartbreak in the poetries that Tanay weaved revolving around his falling in and falling out of love.

Tanay was a student of master’s in English Literature who exchanged conversations with the world-famous poet Pablo Neruda residing in his mind (a symbol of his repressed artistic self) sitting near the pond situated in the backyard of his house. He was an aspiring writer who would always end up writing poetries instead of writing the novel he wanted to write. He was different, unaffected by the helter-skelter of everyday life absorbed in his own world of art, and poetries and subconsciously searching for a muse to enrich his creative self.

Love for Tanay came like a wind in the form of an unnamed tenant who made him dance like the blooming flowers of spring, turning him into shreds with his departure. In him, Tanay found his muse and a home that the poet inside him used to liberate his creative self from the shackles of his coyness.

Witnessing two artists falling in love from the other side of the screen felt surreal. A painter who is also a photographer and a poet who found the way to each other’s hearts gave rise to an immortal art that is abstract and could only be felt by Tanay who gave a form to this abstract through his words, thus elevating his creativity.

Colours played a major role in depicting the events of Tanay’s life. Initially, Tanay wore shades of blue that depicted the serenity of his nature and the nature around him exuded but after falling in love we saw him wearing red symbolizing the love that smitten his heart. However, after heartbreak, we saw him wearing blue again portraying his agony over his lover who abandoned him. Tanay’s life, therefore, was like the kaleidoscope of colours that spoke more about his emotions than he and his poetries ever expressed.

The miscellany of grey, blue and red polaroids that held the memories of Tanay’s forbidden love with his beloved were the last remains of his unfulfilled love, holding onto which he vented out his distress in his verses. The desolate corners of the room which were once vibrant when Tanay and his unnamed lover made love now stood as the souvenir of all the moments. Tanay recalls every second sitting in one of its corners to give himself solace that one day, he will return but that one day Tanay knew will never come, on that very day when the epiphany of his sister Anuja’s elopement with his lover was divulged to him.

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Tanay always dreamt of becoming an author but couldn’t even after multiple attempts. He used to fuss over his incapability of becoming an author to his beloved who always used to assure him that he would be successful in his endeavour one day. Pain is the driving force and inspiration of all authors in some way or the other and I feel maybe to help Tanay fulfil his ambition, his lover deliberately left him to compel Tanay to choose misery as his muse and not him.

With an ounce of his heart being taken away by his beloved, Tanay indeed became the author and wrote his novel “Cobalt Blue” meaning enlightenment, the enlightenment he acquired basking in the world of literature to seek refuge from his heartbreak. Tanay a closeted individual, with a battered heart inflicted with betrayal wandered around in the search of his lost home which he ultimately found in his passion, ignited by his pain of half-love.

Cobalt Blue thus very poignantly narrates a queer love story using art and literature as the medium to showcase the progression of its protagonist enhancing the beauty of its storytelling. I feel Tanay would have never become an author if he didn’t experience that heartbreak because it’s that heartbreak that freed the Pablo inside Tanay giving wings to his artistic self to soar and shine high.

~Love is so short; forgetting is so long.~

Image Credits: Poster from Netflix film, ‘Cobalt Blue’. 

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