Traffic lights become memory instead of sight
On a reality television stage watched by millions, actor Gaurav Khanna offered something rarer than drama: a quiet, candid account of living with colour blindness his entire life. His confession on Bigg Boss 19 drew public attention to a condition affecting roughly one in twelve men globally — one that shapes every ordinary moment, from reading a traffic light to choosing a shirt, yet remains almost entirely absent from public conversation. In placing his private adaptation into shared view, Khanna did what awareness rarely achieves through statistics alone: he made an invisible condition briefly, meaningfully visible.
- A beloved television actor's offhand confession on a reality show suddenly gave a face to a condition that affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide but almost never enters public conversation.
- Colour blindness quietly disrupts the mundane — traffic lights, digital interfaces, workplace signage, and clothing all assume colour vision as a default, turning routine moments into daily negotiations for those without it.
- People with colour vision deficiency have long built their own workarounds: memorizing the position of traffic signals, labelling household items, and using smartphone apps as colour translators — invisible labour performed every single day.
- Filtered lenses, specialized apps, and adaptive strategies offer individual relief, but the deeper fix lies in systemic inclusive design — in building roads, screens, and workplaces that do not treat colour vision as universal.
- The conversation Khanna sparked is fragile but real: whether a television moment translates into lasting design reform and genuine awareness remains uncertain, but the silence around this condition has, at least briefly, been broken.
Gaurav Khanna, familiar to Indian television audiences through his role in Anupamaa, sat in the Bigg Boss 19 house and shared something he has carried his whole life: he cannot reliably distinguish colours. The confession landed differently than the usual reality-show revelations. He described traffic lights — those signals everyone else reads in an instant — as a lifelong puzzle, and in doing so, opened a door to a condition most people have never seriously considered.
Colour vision deficiency occurs when the eye's cone cells fail to process certain wavelengths of light. The most common form is red-green deficiency, though blue-yellow variations exist, and in rare cases a person sees the world entirely in grey. It is usually inherited, which means there is no cure — only adaptation. People memorize the position of traffic signals rather than their colour, use smartphones to identify hues, and label clothes and household items to avoid confusion. These are not dramatic accommodations. They are constant, quiet negotiations with a world built for people who see differently.
The scale of that world is worth pausing on. Roughly one in twelve men and one in two hundred women live with some form of colour blindness globally — millions of people navigating systems that assume colour vision as a baseline. Filtered glasses and mobile applications offer partial relief, but they are individual solutions to what is fundamentally a design problem. Inclusive apps, signage that does not rely solely on colour, and workplaces that acknowledge the condition would do far more.
Khanna's story, in the end, is less about one actor's experience and more about the millions who have long adapted in silence. Whether his moment of visibility translates into genuine systemic change remains to be seen — but the conversation, at least, has begun.
Gaurav Khanna, known to television audiences for his role in Anupamaa, sat down on Bigg Boss 19 and shared something he has lived with his entire life: he cannot reliably distinguish colours. The confession, delivered with candor in the house, landed differently than the usual reality-show theatrics. He spoke about traffic lights—how red, yellow, and green, those signals everyone else reads instantly, have always been a puzzle to him. The moment resonated. It opened a door to a condition most people have never thought much about, despite its prevalence.
Colour vision deficiency, the clinical term for what is commonly called colour blindness, happens when the cone cells in the eye fail to process certain wavelengths of light. The most frequent version is red-green deficiency, though blue-yellow variations exist as well. In rare cases, a person perceives the world entirely in shades of grey. The condition is typically inherited, which means there is no cure. But that does not mean people cannot live full lives—it means they adapt, develop strategies, find workarounds.
What makes Khanna's revelation significant is that it surfaces something invisible. For most people, recognizing a traffic signal is automatic, unconscious. For someone with colour vision deficiency, it becomes a deliberate act. They memorize the position of the lights—red at the top, yellow in the middle, green at the bottom. They rely on sequence and habit rather than colour itself. They use their phone to identify what they are looking at. They label their clothes, their wires, their household items so they do not mix things up. These are not dramatic accommodations, but they are constant, daily negotiations with a world designed for people who see colour the way most people do.
The numbers are worth sitting with. Globally, roughly one in twelve men and one in two hundred women live with some form of colour blindness. That is millions of people navigating a world that largely ignores their existence. Traffic signals, digital interfaces, workplace signage, clothing choices—all of these assume colour vision as a baseline. Khanna's openness on a show watched by millions created something rare: a moment where an invisible condition became visible.
There are tools that help. Filtered glasses and specialized contact lenses can enhance colour contrast, offering partial improvement. Mobile applications now exist that can identify colours instantly, turning a smartphone into a translator between the world and the person looking at it. But these are individual solutions to a systemic problem. The real shift would come from inclusive design—from apps and digital platforms built with colour-blind users in mind, from road signage that does not rely solely on colour differentiation, from workplaces that understand the challenge and accommodate it.
Khanna's story, then, is not really about him. It is about the millions of people who have learned to live quietly with a condition that affects them every single day, and about a television moment that briefly made that quiet struggle visible to everyone watching. Whether that visibility translates into actual change—into more inclusive design, into greater awareness, into a world that thinks about people like him when building its systems—remains to be seen. But the conversation has started, and that matters.
Notable Quotes
Recognising traffic lights has always been a challenge for him—a reality that struck a chord with audiences— Reporting on Gaurav Khanna's Bigg Boss 19 revelation
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
When Gaurav talked about traffic lights on Bigg Boss, what do you think surprised people most?
That something so ordinary—something they do without thinking—is actually a puzzle for someone else. Most people have never considered that a traffic light could be confusing.
Does he have to avoid driving, or does he manage it?
He manages it. He knows the pattern, the position of the lights. It becomes memory instead of sight. But it requires constant attention, constant translation.
Is colour blindness the same for everyone who has it?
No. Red-green is most common, but blue-yellow exists too. In rare cases, someone sees only in grey. The experience is different depending on which wavelengths you cannot process.
Why does it matter that he spoke about this on a reality show rather than, say, in a medical journal?
Because millions watch Bigg Boss. A medical journal reaches doctors. A confession on television reaches people who have never thought about the condition at all—and maybe some who live with it and have never heard anyone else name it.
What changes if people become aware?
Designers start thinking about it. Apps get built differently. Signage changes. The world stops assuming everyone sees the same way. It is not revolutionary, but it is real.