I was not convinced. But then people who argued offered proofs. George Bush went to Iraq on false pretense. Anything is fair in love and war. Politicians never tell the truth. Businessmen never disclose their incomes. People do what is convenient for them. Intellectuals are in connivance with the rest. Banks take money from customer accounts. Black money gets white in the budget. Nothing is pure. All is lure. Day nor night, we are in the Twilight Zone.

But I argued that character is a moral function of life. Black stands in its place, so does white. Gray is nothing but a smudge when both colours bleed and smear the moral space. That is when bad gets mixed up with good, immoral with moral, until our minds can no longer register the difference between hues. A fourteenth-century Japanese essayist named Kenko withdrew from the imperial court at Kyoto and spent his life as a Buddhist monk. One of the many things which irked him was how life around him had lost its character. He resented that the Japanese officials had even forgotten how to properly hang a criminal.

What is surprising about the gray is not that it is improper, but that it is deemed as being proper. It is like going to a magic show and becoming deluded that illusion is real, that the magician's sleight of hand is what pushes the world. It is possible that some of us are colourblind, unable to tell black from white or even to notice that gray is a lighter shade of black or darker shade of white.

Gray is often a confusion, a moral dilemma created by error in judgment, which, again, is a by-product of misguided perception. We are unable to comprehend certain things as sight plays trick on the eyes, smell on the olfactory, touch on the skin, sound on the ears and taste on the taste buds. It is possible to view the world as it is not, when sense behaves like nonsense.

Not to say, the gray exists amongst us, all of us, like distortions are reflected even in the finest mirror. It is the moment of transference when light changes into dark, black into white or other way around. We encounter the moments of gray at the break of dawn or nightfall. Likewise, the moments of gray come when the mind is not sufficiently matured or goes over the hill in clarity and strength.

So, the world is not necessarily gray as some of us would like to think. Instead that is where lies the source of all moral deviations and depravities as we try to force the unreal on the real, falsehood on truth, shadow on light, thus creating the muddy water where we can fish. In fact, gray is used as a smokescreen to hide ulterior motives, the hideous, devious elements of our thoughts and schemes.

And that is the gruesome fact of the world being gray. Corruption, squalor, dirt, filth, lechery and sordidness of men are swept under the rug. It is like drowning odour under a cloud of fragrance, a clever short-cut to get away from guilt and blame. Gray is when people live beyond their means, when people get jobs incongruous with their qualifications, when people are unfair, improper, biased, obscene and unabashedly deviant in their moral convictions.

Slavery is gray, prostitution is gray, and hypocrisy is gray. Politics is gray, diplomacy is gray, and affluence is gray. Any wrong that is committed in the guise of right is gray. Any ill intention in the guise of benevolence is gray. Anything done contrary to its appearance is also gray. Pimping is gray, promiscuity is gray, and profiteering is gray. Any attempt to dupe others, however intelligent, is obviously gray.

I have been told that gray is at once necessary and sufficient. It is not enough to know black from white unless the mind learns to appreciate that what indeed matters is gray. I have been told that East or West, gray is the best. Everywhere it is the staple of success, the raw material which produces astute men who are deft actors on the stage. Gray gives the flexibility one needs, and saves the qualms of conscience from all misdeeds.

But does it really absolve us from the guilt? Colours may degenerate, black fading and white shading, but does it really justify the loss of original shades? Shall we accept that loss in the birth of our children? Shall we accept it in the loyalty of our spouses? Shall we allow gray in our right to property? Shall we accept confusion in our own identity?

If the answer to these questions is no, then how could it ever be yes? Gray is illegitimacy, gray is infidelity, gray is insincerity, and gray is inconsistency. It is, by and large, the mother of degeneration, debauchery, depravity and disillusionment. Natural gray exists as a hiatus in the colour scheme, a half-way house between black and white that confirms the two extremes.

Concocted gray is a different story. It is created to compound black and white so that we can not tell which exists. This gray is a holiday resort for the compromising minds, sipping on the drinks of ecstasy in the beachfront of corruption. This gray is drunken revelry of aroused minds, looking for more drinks on the excuse to get sober.

Gray is gray like black is black, or white is white. We need it to understand, not misunderstand, the other two colours. The world has as many shades as colours. If we believe that the world is gray, we lose sight of other colours.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.