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You may take pride in ‘Blue Blood’ but never in ‘Blue Baby’.

“Great shades of blue, you find them in nature. They’re all magic.”

Have you visited the heaven of earth, Switzerland? Have you gone to Geneva to reach out to the Conseil Européen pour la Nucleaire (CERN)? It is the European Organisation for Nuclear Research that probes the fundamental structure of the particles that make up everything. The world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), are used to accelerate particles to very high speeds and to collide them to study their interactions. Here, you will find the Shiva statue that was a gift from India to celebrate its association with CERN. Lord Shiva is beautified as he practices the ‘Nataraj’ dance, which symbolises Shakti or life force. After this, you may become paused getting this mere information. It may appear as cock and bull story because of the mythology of ancient Indian tradition and the fundamental research to explore the subatomic structure of elements. But you will be surprised to know that Shiva, the God, has been portrayed with a blue complexion in the Indian mythology. Again, it will enable you to explore the mysteries of body color, and biologists almost deny it as far as the level of body complexion of the biological entities is concerned. Let me take you to the story and expedite your endocrine to walk down the awesome mythological attributes in the Hindu religious mindset. The blue complexion of Shiva’s throat is not only a matter of artistic preference but also carries a profound symbolic and mythological significance. According to Hindu mythology, the ‘Devas’ and the ‘asuras’ cooperated in churning the cosmic ocean in search of the amrita, the nectar of immortality. A deadly poison, ‘halahal’, emerged from the churning that was capable of destroying all the creation. As a part of his selflessness, lord Shiva consumed the poison. In order to prevent his death, he held it in his throat, which turned blue from the potency of the poison. Besides Shiva, several deities in Hindu mythology, like Lord Krishna and Lord Rama, are depicted with blue skin. The body colour of Vishnu and the other avatars signifies their vastness, connection to the cosmic bean, divine power, serenity, righteousness, and their protection from all evils. With the passage of time, the great monarchies and their successors treated them as the symbol of blue blood. It refers to their aristocracy or nobility. The term ‘blue blood’ is a metaphor that suggests the blood of noble families, perhaps due to their fairer skin and visible veins in contrast to the fairer skin. It also implies the uninterrupted line of inheritance having sound wealth, power to rule and the higher social positions in the context of the time period. In a word, blue blood indicates royal and aristocratic lineage. Although blue blood is more symbolic than literal, the origin of this metaphor might have gone to the Spanish phrase ’Sangre azul,’ which literally means blue blood. The castle region of Spain used it to signify the purity of their bloodline. But as far as royal lineages are concerned, the lineage is established through the marriages between the different royal families. All the time, the aristocratic lineages were not positive; some hidden dangers appeared as a part of negotiations among them. The most striking example was the blood disorder disease hemophilia that put the royal families in danger, particularly the male members, in this landscape. If blue blood signifies the royal, aristocracy and powerful lineages, the blue baby is quite different from Indicates a catastrophe. Blue baby basically indicates a syndrome where the baby’s skin appears blue due to low oxygen levels in the blood. It is also called cyanosis. The bluish colour is mostly observed in the organs like lips, earlobes and nail beds. The blue syndrome is mostly caused by the abnormalities in the vascular system in general and the heart, lungs and blood cells, RBC in particular. In the normal situation, through double circulation, the exchange of oxygen in the different parts of the body takes place through the cardiac cycle, but abnormalities of the oxygenation process lead to a blue colour appearance over the soft part of the body. A lot of underlying heart conditions may be responsible for this misfortune. Anomalous conditions in the pulmonary blood return system, transposition of the great arteries leading to reverse blood circulation, defect in tricuspid valves, and pulmonary hypertension are some of the causes that may bring about this type of issue. Normally, the inability to gain weight by the baby despite sufficient nutritious food intake may be treated as a signal for the same. If the baby is administered rich nitrate-containing food unknowingly, a condition known as methemoglobinemia may be responsible for this tragic state of the baby. Only the symptoms are not enough, the different types of tests like ECG, X-ray, and oxygen saturation level estimation are some of the diagnostic protocols that can be considered for further confirmation, subject to the advice from the physicians in general and cardiologists as well as pulmonologists in particular. If ‘blue blood’ is a mark of aristocratic lineage, then blue baby is the symptom of misfortune. The rich Indian mythology is the treasure of knowledge that marks the symbol of imagination, empowered with a scientific appetite. The colour blue signifies both the positive and negative vibes of human feelings. On one hand, it indicates calmness, peace and stability; while on the contrary, it also denotes sadness, depression or coldness. The blue firmament of the horizon can expedite our endocrine to bring the state of imagination of vastness. The magnanimous images of the Avatars in Hindu mythology, like Shiva, Krishna and Rama, provide us with positive vibes of life empowered with calmness, greatness, trust, loyalty, serenity, stability, reliability and responsibility, like many intangible values of life. But on the contrary, if it is negative emotions, it may bring sadness, coldness and depression, like the blue baby syndrome. But the blue baby is undoubtedly creating a lot of issues and challenges in the context of sound health and body for survival. You may find magic amidst the blue color, but the magic of the reality of life becomes a sauce for your thought to explore the beauty of the biological world.