The Unfair

 I remember from my childhood .When I was about ten I had come to my grandma's  house for a vacation. One day one of my aunts who happened to  be a doctor decided to take me with her when she had to attend a house call for a patient who lived nearby.
 My aunt was a well known figure in the locality and as we walked along,she told me that she'd introduce me to people she knew and in a winking manner asked me to say a polite “Namaste”  to them.I nodded, she smiled and holding  my hand proudly  we walked along.
We stopped by when she saw a woman standing in front of a house."Hello !! Sushma."she called out ."Remember my sister Renuka"? This is her daughter. The women looked at me and I smiled and raised my folded hands in a namaste.

"Is this Renuka's daughter"?

The women said disbelievingly. Then I didnt understand her words and simply walked on .  But sometime later i instinctively knew those words were disparaging.  I was the “not  fair”  daughter of a  fair mother and as soon as I realized  the instinctive disappointed reaction of the woman about my complexion, I was hit. To be true,It felt bad in a strange manner

 I was the loved and pampered  girl of my family.  Cutest kid ever. My family was educated and if not  enlightened ,broad-minded to say atleast,the talks in my home were mostly about books, literature politics and in my  world  no one ever mentioned color as an virtue to have as a part of looks or personality. Infact I grew up with the  thought that I was lovable and attractive.

But somewhere deep inside me,that woman’s words kept on ringing repeatedly .Somehow she had succeeded in wounding me which created apart in me which was selfconscious and lacked confindence.

 To keep it short , I had become a victim of Indian color prejudices and perhaps was in the direction of growing up to be the kind of women the fairness cream ads targeted. I am talking about the regular ads for fairness creams for women which provoke the sense of  indignation in girls when they first appeared with their dark complexion. The young girls are shown  as total losers when they were darker .They couldn’t get jobs, were rejected by men , totally lacked  on self confidence  and perhaps weren't supposed to be eligible for having  dreams .Next part happens to be ,Just a few weeks with a fairness cream changes their world.They become the beautiful,the self confident,the  winners. Oh and the boy who had rejected her earlier is now bowled over by her new look and  with the exchange of some coyly smiles,she is shown to be melting into his arms. The joke could’nt get funnier as well as nastier than this. And this being not a one day story.We watch it every single day.

Talking of complexions in our culture, our much loved gods Ram and Krishna both happen to be dark and so is the powerful goddess KALI.  In spite of this white is associated in our culture with purity while black is associated with evil and sin.

 Whatever may be the reason, the desire to be fair lies deeply rooted in our psyches and is unlikely to disappear any time soon. Fair is going to continue to be synonymous with attraction for many for a long time to come and perhaps there is nothing we can do about people having these stereotypes in their minds.
And all of this makes the role of parents in  guarding their children  from getting complexes about being dark, becomes even more important.They may not be able to completely stop the outer world from getting in and affecting them but at least what they  ‘ll  make is an educated adult from the family who  will perhaps  avoid making insensitive comments about complexions and maybe  the hurting that  causes lifelong regrets and complexes will vanish.

A bit of too much of optimism,perhaps but for me…Yes I am Renuka's daughter. I love her and she loves me for a lot of things and we together somehow prove that being “not fair” is not Unfair at all.   :-)

  Anamika