Lakshmi Menon, Model. Photo by Morgan (http://www.flickr.com/photos/morgandeary/3480302606/sizes/m/in/set-72157617298236521/)
I wanted to see her in the white wedding dress. With her groom, whom I have not met. It is an arranged marriage. What a funny word, isn’t it? ‘Arranged’ marriage. Arrangements, all our lives.
My sweet friend. Liza. She is a beautiful and gorgeous woman. Tall and curvy. The only forgettable thing about her is her hair, which is kind of rough textured. She has expressive eyes and a shy, pretty smile. Would have made a beautiful bride in a white wedding gown.
She used to tell me, ‘Saika, you tell me that I am beautiful. But half the people I meet do not think so. People compare me with Nandita Das and I feel irritated, angry. They think it’s a compliment. It is an insult. To me and to her. As if being dark-skinned, I am worthy of comparisons only with Nandita. That’s the only similarity I have with her.’ She hated the whole arranged marriage business. She also told me, ‘ I had only one demand. My groom should not be fair. He must be dark. I cannot stand a lifetime of comparisons of skin colour of mine and my husband’s and the sneering from the neighbourhood aunts who would whisper behind my back – oh my God, why did he marry her? He would have got a fair skinned bride.’
She was not paranoid about nothing. The parents of a guy whom I know went to ’see’ her and rejected her. Their son had a darker skin tone than hers. Their reason – if the husband and wife both have dark skin, the next generation will also be dark skinned. They want fair skinned grandchildren. I was left thinking, what if the children got their dad’s skin colour? As in Liza’s case?
Her mother has a light skin and Liza’s little brother got her genetics. Liza had a childhood where she was forced to drink milk and honey and other odd food, which her mother thought would make her skin lighter. I remember her saying these things to me when we were classmates in school. She did not like milk and of course did not believe it would make her fairer. Then, there was ‘Fair and Lovely’ and the other fairness creams. I do not know if I should blame her mother. She is a nice woman herself. She knows very well how cruelly the society treats the darker skinned. Must have hoped that somehow she could make her daughter’s skin magically fairer. However, her actions contributed to Liza’s inferiority complex.
And I remember, it was 1994. Aishwarya Rai and Sushmita Sen had become beauty queens. Beauty contests were a new concept to me and my friends in fourth standard. So, we decided to find the beauty queen of our class. ‘Miss Fourth C’. Tanya and me were chosen as judges. There was going to be no contest in which the participants walked down the ramp in ravishing clothes. Instead, we would use our sense and discretion to choose the most beautiful girl in our class. We both were not considered pretty, hence there was no chance of us giving the crown to one of us.
We set out on the task at hand. Out of the twenty five – thirty girls in our class, we shortlisted ten. I remember very clearly that our criteria were skin colour, body type and features, in that order. Being 9 year olds, our concept of beauty was very vague. We thought that the most beautiful girl would be the one who is light skinned, blonde and thin. Of course, there were no blondes in our class. Only jet-black haired Indian girls.
Liza was not in the shortlisted ten. She didn’t matter. She was dark. Or black, ‘Karuthathu’ as we call in Malayalam. ‘Karutha penkutti, velutha penkutti’. ‘Black girl, white girl’.
I and Tanya were having a tough time, choosing three from ten. All the girls fit our criteria. We could not decide who was more beautiful in the chosen ones. We were arguing. I said, ‘look Sarita is fair, I do agree. But I honestly do not think she is pretty. I guess we will give it to Neeta. She has straight, long hair. She is tall and lanky. ‘ Tanya was saying, ‘Treesa wears the prettiest frocks. That is a plus-point. Reshma is the ‘whitest’ girl in our class, so she should definitely be in top three’. It was then I turned and I saw Liza.
‘Aye Tanya, I think Liza is pretty. She is black. But look, she has a good-looking face’. Tanya looked at Liza. ‘Yeah, she is good. But, Saika, our criteria includes whiteness. We can’t include her’. ‘But Tanya, she is beautiful. Coming to think of it, I think she should be made our beauty queen’. ‘No Saika, no. I think Treesa is our beauty queen.’ ‘What about a second or third place?’ ‘But she is not even in our list’.
I could not convince Tanya. It was a small game played by kids. We announced our winners. I do not remember which three girls we had finally chosen. But we had awarded a seperate title to Liza. ‘Black Beauty’.
In school bus, Liza used to sit next to me. She refused to sit next to me that day. I did not understand why. She was angry about the ‘Black Beauty’ title. I told her, ‘See, it’s a compliment’. She refuted blankly and said it was an insult. ‘I cannot see your point Liza. We agree that you are a beauty’. ‘You would never see my point. You have light skin’.
I digested that point that day. I realized that beauty had nothing to do with skin colour. It was Liza who taught me that on that day.
Growing up bombarded with advertisements of fairness creams on TV, I too had the idea that being fair-skinned was being beautiful. All the beautiful women in my realm of knowledge were fair. Madhuri Dixit, Juhi Chawla, Shilpa Shetty, Aiswarya Rai. In South Indian movies, Khushboo, Sobhana, Revathy. All these actresses were ‘white’. Yes, there was a Kajol Mukherjee. In Baazigar. She was dark skinned. I had heard senior girls in school commenting, ‘Yeah that girl Kajol is good although she is dark’. ‘Although she is dark’. Kajol was an exception. Whenever I saw African-American actresses in English movies, I spoke out loud, ‘Wonder who thinks these women are beautiful?’ ‘Hey mom, watch this TV show. That black girl just got a prize in the beauty contest’.
Liza and me used to talk about the role of skin colour in the beauty perceptions of Indians. In college, which both of us attended together, fair skinned girls got unfair attention. Many people refer to her as a dark beauty as I had done, that day in fourth standard. She gets annoyed, but she has learned to take it in her stride. At least she has to, the colour of the skin is least of our worries in our day-to-day lives. Unless, of course, we decide to take the ‘arranged’ route to marriage.
Recently, our movie industry is more acceptive about dark skinned actors, and Bipasha Basu is the sexiest woman in Asia. Rani Mukherjee rules the ads. Remember her in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, in which she wore make-up that looked like she had put on white putty on her face? Compare that to her looks in Bunty aur Bubli. Dusky is lovely, says this Times of India article from 2003. Lakshmi Menon, Freida Pinto and Carol Gracias are dusky beauties. ‘Dusky’, a euphemism.
Arranged marriage market has not changed. Even a bit. ‘Fair,slim, good looking girls’ are still in demand. All matrimony sites offer you option to choose your skin colour. Are you fair, medium, very fair, dark, wheatish or very dark? It matters. At the least, you must be fairer than your groom. Golden brown colour of Liza does matter there. Yeah, she is beautiful. But come on, who likes it? All they see is brown skin. And I live in a city where all fair-skinned girls are asked if they are North Indians. That too, when Aishwarya Rai, Rekha, Vidya Balan and the like are South Indians.
Beauty, they say, is skin deep. Prejudices are often much deeper.
When Liza got engaged, I asked her, ‘Is your fiancee handsome? ‘ She replied, ‘I don’t know. I don’t care. All I know is that he has great character and an amazing sense of humour. Yes, he is dark skinned, just as I wished.’
I wish Liza all the happiness in the world. Although I could not attend her wedding, I can imagine her as a bride in my mind’s eye. I can also picture the aunts and uncles whispering, ‘The bride is good looking, although she is dark.’
Although she is dark!
No auntie.
She is beautiful.
Whether or not she is dark. Or light. Or fair. Or pink. Or blonde.
Who cares about skin colour?
Come on, even Lord Krishna was dark.
So dark that we made him blue.
