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Let me tell you a modern love story.
There was once a young couple. They worked together. They fell in love.
They were from the same community. They even spoke the same native tongue.
It seemed they were meant to be together.
Her parents said yes. His parents did not.
His mother, a former school headmistress, found the girl's skin colour a problem. The girl was so dark, the mother said, it showed her loose character.
That the mother's own son was brown-skinned did not matter.
And did I mention they were from the same community? Well, they worshipped the same God. But she was from a lower caste, pointed out the boy's mother. So, that was not acceptable, either.
So, the boy married a girl of his mother's choice. A girl who was compatible in both colour and caste.
Meanwhile, what did the jilted girl do? She emigrated to Canada. Carved out a career for herself in a digital media company. Bought a house. Bought an SUV.
Gutsy girl done good and so on? Not everyone thought so.
The young woman, let's call her Sharon, came back to India recently, to spend Christmas with her loving family and to renovate her parents' home in Kerala. It was a bitter homecoming.
Perhaps we are at fault for believing our celebrities. Perhaps it is naïve to expect them to effect change. Given that all most of them do is urge us to change our skin colour.
“No one asked me what I do in Canada, how my life is there, how I cope on my own. All that my relatives told me is that I have become very dark [of complexion], that I have put on weight. That, even though I will soon turn 33, I am still unmarried,” Sharon recalls. She told me all this because we are friends. And she stayed with me here in Bengaluru before flying back to Canada. The irony, says Sharon, is that her skin colour is celebrated in her adopted country.
“It is only when I come home to India, especially when I am with my family and assorted relatives, that I am made to feel terrible about how dark-skinned I am,” she smiles wryly. Interestingly, it must be said here that Sharon's boyfriends in India too all have been lighter-skinned than her. What's more, neither her colour nor her caste mattered till marriage entered the equation. Sharon is lucky, of course. She faced no discrimination in education or employment. Unlike millions of our fellow Indians. But that begs another question.
It's the mindset, stupid
For us Indians, is it colour or caste that matters more? We cannot really choose, can we? Both lie in our DNA, like two intricately interwoven strands, and they impact/influence our lives equally.
Casteism is accepted as part of our reality. After all, it has a say in everything from our births, schooling, education, marriage to, well, our deaths. But it does not normally make the headlines until something truly terrible and tragic happens — like an honour killing, or a student's suicide.
But our “colour-consciousness” is so much a part of our daily life that we talk about it all the time. In fact, we celebrate it. Look at any beauty blogger worth her Twitter handle or YouTube channel — she'll have a “review” of a fairness-enhancement product prominently displayed on her list of “most popular” posts. Because that particular topic will have attracted the most comments, the most interaction from her followers. Because, let's be honest, we all care about sun spots, dark spots, pigmentation, dullness dark underarms and — oh yes — darker unmentionable areas. And naturally, we also have products to target every one of those body parts.
And that is also why our conversation is coloured with stuff like “Oh you've become so tanned” when we're talking to a friend/colleague/loved one.
And that's why people like Sharon are told hurtful things by their own family and friends.
Perhaps we really cannot help being this way. For, every day, we are bombarded by advertisements telling us that our natural colour/skin tone is not good enough. That we need to match the “shade card” (that fairness creams come with). That we must apply the cream/serum/lotion two-three times a day. And that, in turn, will put us on the path to happiness in life and love.
It is so much a part of our culture that boys and girls, men and women, are equally affected by this colour consciousness. In fact, our craze for fairer 'colour' is also our greatest equaliser. Twenty-something John P (a former student of mine), tells me that when he was a little boy, his mother used to slather Fair & Lovely on him daily (there were no male variants of the cream then, as now). No, he doesn't use it anymore. He is confident in his own self/skin today.
And that is, honestly speaking, quite a feat because if the girls have Alia Bhatt showing them how to become “White Super Fresh” with just a powder compact, there's Virat Kohli telling the boys how to get “Max Fairness” out of a tube. For every Shah Rukh Khan, Arjun Rampal, Shahid Kapoor, Sushant Singh Rajput, or John Abraham, there's Katrina Kaif, Sonam Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone or Anushka Sharma using their beauty and box-office star power to back a fairness product.
The 'C' in Celebrity can do so much good
Yet, celebrities can actually do so much more than peddle what is essentially fancy snake oil to us, their faithful followers and fans. Celebrities can actually make a difference, try and change mindsets. Take Nandita Das for instance.
Das has lent her grace to the change-making campaign 'Dark is Beautiful', a movement that urges us Indians to “embrace” (not try and erase) our diverse skin tones. Very few other actors back such campaigns, unfortunately.
There is, however, another equally talented celebrity who sometimes talks about reverse racism. Kalki Koechlin — who was all the buzz recently for her piece 'The Printing Machine' — has said that her “whiteness” gets her stereotyped in terms of film roles. Let me be frank, I totally admire Kalki, both for her acting prowess and her performance art pieces that talk about media sensationalism, womens' empowerment, objectification of women, so on. But for me, it is also extremely disconcerting, to say the least, when this same actor then urges me to use Olay Total Effects Day Cream for my “dull” and “uneven” skin tone.
But personal convictions and professional commitments don't necessarily have to coincide.
Perhaps we are at fault for believing our celebrities, our beloved actors and sportspersons, to be larger-than-life, or superhuman or invincible. Perhaps it is naïve to expect them to effect change. Given that all most of them do is urge us to change our skin colour.
So, in the meantime, perhaps it is better for us to dig deep within ourselves for the courage to love ourselves and — more importantly — the insouciance to shrug off barbs and hurtful comments about our colour or our caste.
Because that's what my friend Sharon does.
Before she left Bengaluru for Canada, she went to get herself a pedicure-manicure. She asked the beautician to paint her nails a fiercely crimson shade. She chose a shade so red, so bold, so fiery that it attracted the light every time she moved.
A shade that accentuated her complexion, that glossy mocha skin tone.
And that's exactly how she wanted it.
