That Black Woman

I was leisurely editing my prospective Facebook profile picture when a wonderful friend of mine sent me an article on how beautiful dark skin is. Well, she usually sends me stuff on this topic to boost my confidence and God forbid if someone argues otherwise, you can see the vehemently protective side of her. The article was what inspired this blog post in the first place. I have never voiced my experiences extremely openly before. But as I read it, I realized that speaking of my journey could actually inspire many women and men out there who have been endowed with an extra dollop of melanin like me.

To foreign eyes, India might be a country of perfectly homogeneous brown people, but the root reality is quite the opposite. Inside India, people fall within a broader colour spectrum…ranging from pitch dark to wheatish to pale white. This diversity in skin colour has created a hierarchy of beauty…a hierarchy that claims that the fair skinned people are the paradigm of beauty, while the dark skinned people are plain ugly. I was seriously unaware of this until I was in the fifth grade. My fair complexioned classmates constantly clapperclawed my skin shade. One of them used to sing “kalloo Jarawa Baratang” like a rhyme almost every day on the school bus. The tune still haunts me sometimes. (Explanation: Jarawans are beautiful and exotic Negroid native tribe of my island and Baratang is the name of the jungle where their settlement dwells. You may Google them for visual effects!) In the tenth grade, when I was at a house warming party at a family friend’s place, one girl refused to drink tea when offered and instead pointed at me and said, “I don’t want to drink tea because I don’t want to look like her.” I didn’t understand what she meant until an Auntie replied to her, “You don’t get dark by drinking tea.” And then the evening continued peacefully as the Auntie gracefully smoothened the awkward moment; but I just sat there quiet and embarrassed among a roomful of people, wishing for Harry Potter’s cloak of invisibility.

I loathed the sun with a passion. I hated going out. Every time someone pitched a plan to picnic on the beach, I’d come up with clever pranks to ruin the plan. I’d do anything and everything to not go to the beach. Well, to this, my friends from college are a huge witness. The amount of persuasion (sometimes blackmailing) needed to get me on a train to Goa is almost equal to the money I spend on shoes!

I hated wearing white and black. White made my skin look darker while black attracted comments like ‘saakshaat kaali maata’, ‘kalooty’, etc. I hated clicking pictures in a poorly lit room because I knew that while the faces of all my friends would show up in the picture, mine wouldn't  Well, now one of my best friends Anshul aka AnshOle has a huge collection of many such pictures of mine and proudly posts it on social media every once in a while when he gets bored with his totally useless and non – happening life. Well, I comment fake – anger on it, claim that it will be avenged…then I post a nice pimply potato – nose close – up shot of his face…people have a good laugh…call us by our famous nickname – Tom and Jerry…him Tom, me Jerry…chapter closed…no self – esteem harmed…all in good humour. To get to this state of mind and this attitude, trust me, I swam an ocean of inferiority complex.

I was not just a dark – skinned girl in the classroom, but a pariah since I was a Tamilian. To my north Indian classmates, the definition of a Tamilian was this: a dark – skinned person who eats only idlis and dosas and who speaks English and Hindi with a drawling heavy Tamil accent. Luckily, I didn't have a Tamil accent while speaking Hindi or English, so I was spared from any ridicule in that department. Growing up in the Island that is proudly tagged Mini India, I got used to Hindi. In a way, it became my first language, the language I am most comfortable in. English followed. But Tamil was nowhere in sight. My skin colour, the stereotyped Tamil culture and the people making fun of Tamil accents pulled me away from anything Tamil. So much so that I could understand what my parents said to me in Tamil but I couldn't reply to them in the same language fluently. I didn't know how to speak Tamil properly and I didn't want to. I didn't want to celebrate any Tamil festival or watch Tamil movies or listen to Tamil songs. To feel good about myself, sometimes I looked down upon my parents when they expressed their Tamil identity. During most of my teenage years, I put on a mask, trying to hide where I came from. I told people I didn't know anything about the culture I belonged to so that they could think I was just like them. At every chance I could, I tried withdrawing my affiliation with my culture. Because I was brought up in a place where I experienced the culture  of my friends more than that of my parents, I felt the culture I saw around me was somehow cooler and better than the one I belonged to. I now know that it wasn't cooler or any better, but just different. I didn't know it then. Back then, I just wanted to be light – skinned so that I could be beautiful because the message was that anything that was not fair was ugly.

Yet at the same time, I wanted to be just as I was because I liked who I was and also because I felt that the people making fun of dark – skinned people were doing something insensitive and hurtful, that they were wrong. And I didn't want to change for the wrong people. Back then, even the TV advertisements for fairness creams were about the dark – skinned girl failing to get the guy, get the job, and get the life of her dreams. The idea was to make you buy into that threatening future of never amounting to anything with the colour that coats you, and then make you buy the magic cream that could give your life the right amount of pinkish/ whitish glow it needs. If anything has changed in the fairness cream industry since then, it is that today the advertisements are less about making you feel bad about what colour you are born in and more about fair – skinned girls aiming for empowerment and gender equality at the same time being a visual delight to onlookers.

I remember innocently asking a girl at school ‘Your lips are so pink, do you apply lipstick?’ To which the girl replied ‘Your lips are so black, do you apply koyla?’ Well, that little incident happened when I was in the seventh or eighth grade. That cute little girl has grown to be a beautiful woman and she probably doesn't even remember this little incident that is so deeply engraved on my mind. She is a friend on my Facebook Account and I’d like to thank her immensely because that incident mercilessly dug out the other hidden talents in me. That night, I filled my diary with all the hatred a twelve year old can conjure. But as I wrote, I somehow unfortunately believed that I was an ugly duckling and that, if I cannot be beautiful I had to shine some other way; but I simply had to…have to shine! Instead of being intimidated by the fair – skinned bullies, I researched the ways to outshine them in some other arena. I got good grades; I became the first kid in my school to play keyboard and guitar in the School Assembly; I read almost every book in my school’s library and State Library’s Children’s section…I explored my sketching talent, picked on my creative side; I participated in almost all the singing and writing competitions. Be it essay or poem or story writing; I was there on the front row writing my heart out…I brought fame to my school’s threshold. My school was proud to have me. I was that silent girl who was absent minded and knew only a handful of people; but every student in the school knew her name. Most importantly, I didn't let the bullies find the satisfaction of belittling my culture. I started learning to read and write Tamil. I started speaking to my parents only in Tamil. I began addressing them Amma Appa instead of Mummy Daddy. Although I still am not completely aware of everything about my culture, but I am not ashamed of it...In fact, I am rather proud belonging to such a traditionally rich acculturation.

I wasn't satisfied yet. People who had the guts to make me feel small pointing out my colour or culture still existed in my classroom and their bullying was only getting more creative with each passing day. That was when I took this creative lunacy to the next level. I wanted to be seen, yet be invisible. I decided to send my poems and articles to certain magazine competitions and local newspapers. I was persistent. After a year or so, I received a letter. It was from the then Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh praising my flair for language English and thanking the gesture of having composed a poem on him as well. At the age of fourteen, I was all over the local news. I had made my point. My school was proud. My parents were proud. Now, at school, before someone passed a comment on my skin, they hesitated. The next milestone was nailing the Island Topper position in the All India Engineering Entrance Examination and securing a seat in a prestigious college NIT, Bhopal. This one was unexpected yet this was the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me till date. It was in this college’s premises that I was gifted with priceless friends who made me realize that I was no ugly duckling. There was no particular melodramatic turning point in my life. It was a gradual mutation. I began working on my self – esteem. I swept the space within me where I once had locked up pain. I kept writing about my dreams in my journal. I shut out the voices of the world and listened to my wonderful friends and to myself, and finally I heard what I always knew – I am beautiful.

I taught myself confidence. I learned that not being ashamed is the first step towards complete confidence about one’s self, one’s bones and flesh. So I became open about my feelings instead of keeping them inside. I told my friends when something hurt. I embraced having a voice. I must say, I could never have done it without my friends. They were always there like a family…in every walk of my life. There are few memories that people create only during their childhood; my friends gave me those memories in my adulthood. They helped me with everything that I felt less confident about; not just my skin colour…my flakiness, my irresponsibleness  my carelessness…everything. Right from getting my ears pierced to riding a bicycle to a scooty to a 100 CC motorbike to RX 100…my friends taught me self – reliance. My friends taught me everything. They made me believe that I am not supposed to be playing the supporting role in my life, I am the lead actress of my life and that I am to grow my own spine instead of hiding behind their protection. They saw more than what I saw in the mirror every day. I remember my friends fighting for me passionately whenever I was wronged…be it social media or on the road or in the market square or in the campus, anywhere! And later they’d scream at me for not standing up for myself. They never saw my impulsiveness as a bane. They respected me for who I was. They taught me not to change for any damn person in this world. They were there with truckloads of logical crap whenever I was in the juncture where I had to take important life changing decisions. They were still there when I heard them all and still did whatever the hell I wanted to do in the first place. They were still hanging around when I paid the consequences. AnshOle even has a special name for me – Askhole…a person who constantly asks for your advice, yet always does the opposite of what you told them. Though life sometimes used to get very sarcastic, their humour and unconditional love kept me glued in one piece. Oh, by the way, their wicked sense of humour wasn't restricted to anything; believe me, they are an expert in cracking racist jokes. They taught me to laugh through it. Statutory Warning: Please do not try cracking one if you aren't a friend; ’cause you’ll hear war cry! Together we redefined fun in the five years of togetherness gifted to us and we still are so freaking awesomely on fire every time we meet!

I understood that being ashamed of how you look or where you belong is being ashamed of your genes, being ashamed of your parents and their childhoods, their struggles and their existence. It took years of practicing self – esteem before my attitude towards my identity changed completely. Today at 24 years of age, I am not ashamed. I don’t fear being seen. Today I can reject a saleswoman’s attempts to sell me a new fairness product that promises to remove the “dark spots” (that’s what they call my skin colour sometimes) or make the Parlour woman see sense when she persistently tries to convince me to get that Whitening Face Pack or answer people where I come from without being ashamed. I still struggle with confidence sometimes, but it is the kind of struggle that has nothing to do with my background, or looks, or skin colour. I don’t feel inferior to fair girls anymore. I am not conscious of my looks while talking to boys. I am no longer bitter towards those who hurt me in the past or those who robbed me of a healthy self – esteem during my teen years. Today I am at peace with all that. I now know that if I had the right amount of self – esteem and power within me, then I no longer needed to avoid buying clothes in colours such as white, yellow, orange and black – the colours that people said would look too bright on me or too dull or too ugly. I realized that it was possible for me to wear whatever colours I liked. I learned that if I had the right amount of confidence and personality, I could pull off a neon – coloured top just like Noemi Campbell.

Surprisingly, my low self – esteem never hampered my dream of finding true love. Somehow I always believed that there was a guy who was above the petty concepts of the world, a guy to whom I would not be an exception to the hollow definition of beauty, but to whom I will be an authentic part of beauty in its truest essence.

This colour consciousness among Indians and the resultant ragging doesn't attract much attention in India since it doesn't qualify as racism. Also, Indian laws provide equal rights to everyone irrespective of race, colour, caste, creed and sex. So, colour consciousness is not part of the system or institution. It is acceptable to make a dark – skinned person feel bad about his or her skin colour because being light – skinned is what is preferred and damages to self – esteem don’t count.

India has not changed since I have grown up. It is still colour conscious. Its fairness cream industry is still booming. Strangers still sometimes poke fun or act plain nasty. But now I know which comments to react to and which ones to faze out, for nothing can now change the way I see myself and the way I define beauty.

I now know that fair and dark are not two sides of a coin called beauty. Neither of them are standards of beauty because beauty in its essence has no standards. The only thing ugly in this world are thoughts and actions that rob us or others of love, peace and joy. Everything else is…beautiful.

xOxo,

Jency John Charles.

Architect of her life and destiny.