Brown: Being a Dark Horse in White India

Brown.

Sure it might remind you of the earth, of the warmth of the soil, of rolling mountains and towering canyons. But I know one person who detested the colour, wished it didn’t exist, wished it wasn’t hers.

Me. I used to wish my skin wasn’t mine. As an Indian, I should have loved my beautiful ebony skin, violently protected it even when the world shunned it.

Right? Wrong.

The sun had always been the enemy, the numerous tubes of sunscreen slathered on my body, were never to battle harmful UV radiation, but to remain ‘fair’. Because becoming a shade darker would just make me uglier. Then came the homemade concoctions (turmeric, yoghurt and what not) that promised to rub the brown off my skin, because fair was, is and will always be beautiful.

I detested the sun for making me ugly, for making me undesirable.

“Blackie!” said my brother tauntingly. He reminisces of his childhood as a fair skinned cherub, while he soaks himself in fairness lotions to rub his tan away.  “You’ve become darker since I saw you last” said my grandmother disapprovingly. “Don’t wear dark colours with your brown skin, you look dull” admonished my father. My mother scrambled to fetch even more chemicals to make me fair, desperate to make her daughter beautiful.

Cursed was I in this brown skin, this skin that I have to live in. Strive I shall to be fair, and thus to be beautiful.

We mocked the “westerners” who lay under the sun wanting to darken their perfect glowing skin. Why would you want to ever be like us, we wondered, because for never once did we think our brown was beautiful.

And then I arrived in the land of the white. Now, I was surrounded by the fair, the beautiful, right? I’m not going to lie; I felt ugly, uglier than I’ve ever felt. How am I to ever compare to these people, whom I’ve been told is the epitome of the beauty I should seek to be?

Until I met him clad in his pale skin. His pale skin glowing, my brown dull in comparison. He liked me, and I thought that was ‘progressive’. How could he see past the bland brown that covered me when I couldn’t? How can he love it when I did not? "Your skin... it's so soft", he murmured in my ears. Is that all it was? Soft? In quiet wonder I realised that there were some to whom the colour of my skin was invisible. They looked past it, at me. And then for the first time, I felt beautiful.

I remember, I was once called a ‘black beauty’ and I glowed with joy, for never once did I think that I was beautiful. But now I wonder, why wasn’t I just ‘a beauty’? Are people ever called a ‘white beauty’?

Today, I run towards the sun, and no longer shy away from it. Today when I am a shade darker, out of habit my fingers itch to scrub it away. But then I remember I am beautiful clad in my ebony skin. I need no longer scrub it away. I need to embrace it.

In a country that worships the fair skinned, it is difficult to find love for the darker of the race. Billboards that sell fairness creams and models photo shopped with unblemished white skin adorn our roadsides and television screens. We are fair and lovely, dark and ugly.

Our dark colonial past (pun unintended) and the stains of it are still visible. It is still ingrained in the minds of our nation that dark is inferior, white superior. It is difficult to find a truly dark skinned model in our magazines or runways. It is still difficult to find someone who doesn’t lament at the tan they’ve got in summer. It is difficult to find someone who doesn’t glow in joy at being told they’ve become ‘fairer.’ We relish at the Snapchat and Instagram filters that lighten our brown. Even after more than half a century of independence, we are still fair and lovely, dark and ugly.

My brother still taunts my skin; my grandmother still disapproves of my skin tone. My mother still thrusts skin lightening lotions into my hands. But I couldn’t care less anymore.

It took a white skinned man to make me realise that his skin wasn’t revered. I had to leave my own country to love myself. This isn’t how it was supposed to happen.

This prejudice that has got a hold of our nation cannot be rid off in one giant sweep. It can only start from within; one person at a time. Today, if I can I love the sun that was a sin to me once, then so can the rest of the country somewhere in the future.

But it has to start from within.

I am not afraid to be ugly in the eyes of others anymore, for I know that my brown is beautiful. 

The world isn’t just black, brown, and white anymore.