“Ram di kudi te saawli he, sohni koini’….the Punjabi aunty looked at me in disgust at a family wedding and said plonking herself on the sofa. That day ‘my being’ was described by a phrase of two condescending words”saawli” (dusky) and “sohni koini”(sweet regardless)…one leading to the other and my first belief was created ‘If you are not fair skinned, you are not beautiful, being dusky means you are ugly’.
That razor sharp remark ‘axed me for life..and I lost my ability to see myself squarely.
As I grew up, the word saawli echoed in my head and everything else got overshadowed.
I told myself, ‘I’m dusky and that deprives me of the right to have a bright future’.
Facing the world with this belief created a dark web around me. Seeing through webs, even the brightest things look dark… So did I.
I was intimidated by every individual I faced and people around me gave their precious piece of advice to help me get fair– starting from besan and haldi to toothpaste! Constantly hearing all this took away every inch of my self-esteem and a new belief was created that being dusky is unacceptable. If I wanted to be accepted, then I had to find ways to get fair.
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“Fair and lovely lagai, saat dino me gori twacha paye.” I was barely 12 when I first saw the advertisement on television. Now the challenge was to arrange money to buy this life changing formuIa. I sacrificed eating Mote ki tikki in school recess for a month and saved money to buy the fairness cream. Nervous and avoiding eye contact with others, I reached the best cosmetic shop in Karnal and asked for Fair & Lovely cream. I felt guilty for no fault of mine. Looking at my desperation, the shopkeeper suggested ‘Didi iske saath Shanaaz ka pack le lo guaranteed gora kar dega’ (Didi, do buy this facepack by Shahnaaz with it, it will definitely make you look fair). Believing his words,I quickly asked how much it was for?
He quoted some INR 150 and the sparkle in my eye quickly disappeared this time. That was a lot of money back then. I barely managed INR 30 after a month of sacrificing my favourite food in school; to arrange INR 150 would take me ages I thought.
When you are in dire need of anything, the devil in you turns the virtues into vices. I cooked up a story of paying a fee of INR 150 for annual function participation at school (which was a lot in those days) to ask for money at home. My dad, who is a fairly simple man, found it unreasonable for the school to be asking for a fee for their function. But feeling that it was important for me to participate in the cultural activities, he gave me the money without doubting my intentions. Wasting no time, I bought the facepack which I thought would miraculously change me. Now I had the combo which would not only make me fair but also could change my destiny, or so I thought.
I secretly tried both Fair & Lovely and Shahnaaz Hussain’s expensive facepack, expecting the miracle to happen.
As the advertisement claimed, I slept with these fairness products on and expected that I would get up one morning with fair skin. Which, of course, didn’t happen!
While my wish was to be fair, after repeated unsuccessful attempts I was ready to make peace with even getting a tone lighter. Unfortunately, nothing changed for me. Every bid to be fair skinned added to my disappointment and I lost all hope in the process. I even stopped looking at myself in the mirror.
If you are unhappy with yourself, the world is unhappier with you and here I was disappointed with myself thinking, ‘Why am I dusky and not beautiful’.
This hugely affected my school life and childhood. I sulked and tried to prove that even if I’m dark skinned, I am intelligent. I hid myself in books, while my classmates would have a good time. Instead, I tried to prove my worth by flattering the teachers– I tried to be their favourite student by complaining about my classmates’. And I ended up being alone, with no friends at school.
Adding to my trauma was Dimple, a girl I had to accompany the most in my school days. She was a neighbour and was a ‘Gori’ (fair) girl.She flaunted her beauty wherever she got a chance– in school, in tutions and in the neighbourhood.
I hated her to the core, and thought her to be a ‘bad girl’ even if she wasn’t so. Her only fault.was that she was fair, good looking, and she enjoyed getting people’s attention for it.
While my school ended and I entered college, my insecurity of being dusky kept increasing.
Since my college was in another town, I had to stay in a hostel. There were all sorts of girls from various demographics, but I was just looking at everyone with one lens ‘the skin colour‘ and counting in my head how many of them were fair skinned. But I have to say some of the not so fair ones also looked cool. I
tried to observe what these girls were doing differently. Since we had common bathrooms in the hostel, I noticed most girls were looking at themselves in the mirror after bath. Unlike me, who did not even attempt to look at the mirror or dressing-up properly, these girls put in effort to look presentable. Some of them used to wear oxidized earrings or funky bracelets with the bright coloured salwar kameez, which added to their overall beauty. Inspired by them, I too bought some pieces but when I tried them on, I thought I wasn’t looking good.
If I had some courage, instead of being overly critical of myself, maybe things would have been different for me. Being self-critical made me more vulnerable at an age when my courage and confidence should have been at its peak.
Most girls in my class were busy flirting with boys. They often spoke about how a guy approached a girl, or the prettier girls would rave about how every other boy was dying to be friends with them. Meanwhile, I thought I was not worthy of a boyfriend; only beautiful girls are. So to escape from such conversations, I simply distanced myself from everyone..Hiding myself, I probably overlooked the advances average looking boys made towards me. Nobody would find me beautiful and that means I wouldn’t have a boyfriend, or so I thought.
In my head I even thought that I was undeserving because of my dusky skin tone. So much so that I thought the good food at our mess was also for the pretty and fair girls, and I didn’t deserve it. How wrong was I!
During this time, two of my cousins got married to fair women. It was an achievement that they flaunted. While they loved me as their sister, they did not realise that their actions of flaunting their fair wives was deeply hurtful to me. And it further made me think that since I was dusky, my future was dark too.
My fair-skinned bhabhis (sister-in-laws) were nice, they cared for me but unintentionally they too happened to hurt me. “Do not wear reds and corals because you are dark; it will make you look even darker,” was probably their first advice to me for some family function. Though I loved those colours, I succumbed to their advice and I stuck to beiges and browns even when I didn’t like these colours.
By now, I was of the marriageable age, living in a society which is obsessed with the thought of having a fair bride. And so, the matrimonial ads looking for a suitable bride were not an option for me. Adding to it, I was also short which made me a total misfit for the ‘marriage market’. Although parents don’t say such things to their child, one can see the worry lines on their faces. It is commonly believed in our society that, if a girl is not beautiful (i.e. slim, fair, and tall), you can’t expect to get a groom for her easily. And if somebody decides to marry her, it could be out of pity.
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One of my dad’s friend’s wife, Sunita aunty, once proposed my rishta for her brother’s son. She found some merit in my submissive nature and she was trying to help my father. When my husband’s family came to see me, I was told they are all very fair but they could consider a dark-skinned girl and so I might have a chance to be accepted… Wow, great people!
And so, the preparation started for my ‘parade’ in front of my to-be in-laws. I tried every possible fairness hack to not get rejected. All the suits that I had in my wardrobe were tried on me and Sunita aunty approved the one which made me look “less dusky”. I am still clueless what made her choose that particular one as I had all beiges and browns and they all looked the same to me.
Anxious, I entered the room in a beige-coloured suit with my hair tied with a clip. It was suggested by Sunita aunty, her logic being that open hair gives a shadow on the face and that could make me look dark.
I had black shiny hair. And by tying my hair back, the one thing I liked about myself was also crushed for this parade and I had no option to disagree with anyone.
I did not even look at the prospective groom. Tensed, I kept silently praying ‘Please accept me’. And finally, after taking a month’s time they finally said yes to me.
I was accepted as a to-be bride and my joy had no end! A dusky girl being accepted by a fair Punjabi boy in the very first meeting was nothing less than a fairy tale for me. And in the process, I overlooked the fact about what took the boy’s family a month to say yes to the proposal. They took their own sweet time, probably weighing the pros and cons of marrying their son to a dusky girl who may come with some ancestral property as my dad had inherited agricultural lands.
The moment they said a yes, I felt I was indebted to them. My family and I were so overwhelmed that we overlooked the eccentric behaviour shown by my husband’s family. Though in hindsight, it seemed so evident and further pushed me into a darker world. Meanwhile, my relatives were envious thinking how a dusky girl like me got hitched to a fair groom. Since reds and corals were forbidden colours for me owing to my skin tone, I even wore a cream-coloured lehenga on my wedding day.
After marriage, when my husband appreciated me and called me beautiful, I couldn’t believe my ears. It was the first time in my life, when I heard someone calling me beautiful and I fell in love with him at that moment. He even wanted me to keep my hair open and to encourage me, he took me to a salon in Delhi for a new haircut a few days later. He even told me how to keep my hair or dress-up– clearly indicative of his obsessive behaviour, which back then I mistook as love and care.
He had the tendency to shop unfairly and he ended up spending most of his salary even before the month ended. He then somehow managed the rest of the days by borrowing money from his parents or using our savings. Since I came from a humble family where my dad used to allocate budgets for everything, I found my husband’s spending habits weird. But blinded by love, I ignored this behaviour and thought it was probably a normal Delhi culture.
Summer arrived and I once asked my husband to buy me a pair of sunglasses. For the sake of making a style statement, he bought me Ray Ban worth INR 3500 when his salary was merely INR 7000! He spent half of his salary on sunglasses and in turn he took away my peace, making me panic over it all the time. “Have you kept them safely?’ ‘Show me where your glasses are.’ ‘Have you lost them?’ or ‘Are they broken?’, he would often ask and I used to run to get them and show him that they were safe. Scared of losing them, I hardly used those sunglasses beyond jewellery. No sane person does that. But poor me. I was so overwhelmed with his mercy that I could not see the insanity back then. I thought he was my saviour, for accepting a dusky girl like me as his wife. But, my saviour turned hostile in no time.
One morning, he asked me about his blue check shirt and when I couldn’t find it on time he was in rage. He hit me violently, and then left for work. I was shocked beyond words, and cried the whole day. I cursed myself for being so careless. Not even once did I think that what he did to me was inhuman and unacceptable. Instead, when he was back home in the evening, I tried my best to please him. He had no remorse for what he did to me, and neither did I try to make him realise his fault. And soon, this became a norm in our house. I was blamed for everything, even when he misplaced the things which he kept safely. And I took every blame, in turn forgiving him for all the wrong he did to me. I accepted my fate thinking that if I was born beautiful I would not have been subjected to this injustice. I wish I knew back then that I had chosen this fate by limiting my worth to just one parameter– the colour of my skin.
His hot and cold behaviour continued towards me, and I kept accepting it in my marriage. I soon became a mother to a healthy baby boy. And motherhood made me put on a lot of weight which made me look short, fat, and dark– a lethal combination in our society which is obsessed with women being ‘slim, fair, tall’. That was enough for me to feel even more vulnerable and for him to nudge me further. Anxious, I tried to lose weight as I had studied diet and nutrition. While I could not go back to how I looked earlier, I managed to become somewhat presentable in a year’s time.
When my son turned 2, I came across a job opportunity to work as a dietician at a plush weight loss centre. My first challenge was to seek my husband’s permission to go for an interview. He agreed and I went for the interview the very next day. The interviewer was quite sophisticated and fair, and looking at her I felt like an underdog already; my confidence slipped from zero to negative. She asked me one or two very basic questions regarding the subject and I fumbled. She sensed my nervousness and straight away asked, ‘Are you ready to work? Do you even want to work?’ ‘Ma’am I want to work and I will learn everything, and I will work very hard and won’t disappoint you! Please give me this job,’ I said all this in one breath. She paused for a moment and then agreed to hire me. Maybe she could see through ‘the victimised me’ and out of sympathy, decided to give me a chance. Thrilled on getting the job, I came back home with the appointment letter. However, I feared that maybe my husband or in-laws wouldn’t let me work and I would have to give up the job. But surprisingly, my unpredictable husband happily gave me the permission to start working. He was even excited about the fact that I will bring in the extra income for his indulgence, which was a little compromised because we were a family of three now.
Since it was a elite weight loss centre in a posh Delhi colony, they were very particular about the appearance of their client-facing employees. Therefore the HR imparted the most useful training for grooming. I got to enter a new world where I was well groomed in a saree, though I felt under-confident due to my subconscious thoughts that ‘I am not good looking’.
But on the job, I discovered this world was very different. For the first time in my life, I felt the clients and colleagues were interacting with me very pleasantly and were not discriminating against me for my complexion. In fact, nobody ever commented on skin colour. It was more about my personality, knowledge, communication skills, and integrity than my skin tone. in just a few months, I also managed to shed the extra kilos by applying all the newly learnt diet charts on me.
At work I got compliments for how I looked. The day my husband treated me well, it reflected on me and I probably looked nice. And on days when he was nasty, it reflected too.
While the situation at home oscillated from very nasty to just fine, the compliments from my colleagues struck a chord with me and I started accepting myself for how I looked. I started to put in a little extra effort and time in grooming for work and for social events. I started loving myself and getting compliments in return. This definitely boosted my confidence. My self-worth took a leap and I started connecting with people and winning their hearts. My consciousness about being dusky had somewhat faded and my self inflicted wounds were healing. My confidence showed in my smile. However, seeing my confidence and self-love made my husband feel threatened. He started abusing and humiliating me often. I knew he wanted to destroy me yet, I took his wrath.
It took me a long time to overcome this and finally after being married for 20 years and enduring this inhuman behaviour, I decided to stand up for myself and walked out of the marriage. My son, who grew up seeing my unhappy marriage, supported me through this difficult phase. Not just this, I also started living life on my own terms now…
“That red saree looks amazing on you,” a young male colleague once told me. “You look stunning in that coral lipstick,” a girl in my team said. “I looked at you and was thinking who is this beautiful lady,” a handsome man once approached me at an elite business party.
How did that happen to me? Did I find a magic cream? Did I take a glutathione injection to get fair? Or a plastic surgery grafting my thigh skin on my face? No, I did not do any of these. Instead, I tried to regain my ability to see myself as I am and accept myself whole-heartedly. I befriended the mirror and looked at myself without any prejudice, only to discover that everything in me was beautiful– the forehead, the eyes, the nose, the lips, and even my smile… Except for the lackluster skin, everything was just perfect with me. I decided to get some glow on my skin and visited one of my dearest friends who is a dermatologist. I consulted her and she found that my skin badly needed nourishment. All these years, I had only fed my husband’s ego in order to feel beautiful, and in the process my skin became malnourished. She suggested an effective skin care regime and my skin got better in no time.
Is it love or ‘Dove’, people asked, seeing the change in me.
It was love for sure and the highest form of love– self-love without doubt, without prejudice. Now, I look at myself everyday admiring the change in me ( Thank you, Dr. Meghna for making me glow!)
I wondered why I did not take her advice earlier and realised, I didn’t believe I could look beautiful too.
Women now envied me for my how I looked, while me appreciated my beauty. Once when a journalist client of mine asked me what made me look so beautiful, and I simply answered it was self-love. He wasn’t convinced with it, but I am. My dusk has transformed into dawn, unveiling new horizons for me.
Now that I have started loving and accepting myself and it has transformed my life, I feel compelled to seek the answer to this question: Why is beauty associated with fair skin in our country when three-fourth of our population is genetically brown?
I found my answer. We were ruled by Britishers for hundreds of years and were looked down upon by them as a race. We imbibed that inferiority and associated white skin with superiority. We assumed that brown skinned people are bound to face the ill fate of slavery and discrimination. This pointless assumption pushed thousands of dusky girls, like me, into unfair treatment and fate.
Over the years, I have tried to make many dusky girls get their confidence back and love themselves for who they are. Today at 45, after my own transformation and journey, I can say that being dusky does not make you ugly; one just needs to feel beautiful to be beautiful. I wish I could tell this to my younger self. I could have saved myself from so many bruises and the pain which followed them.
So, with grace, I embraced all darkness to pursue the bright sunshine ahead, and that’s when my version 2.0 was born.
Authored by: Manisha Shankar
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