mmm…Wheatish…Golden Brown…Yellowish!!!??? Coffee color!!!
Almost every Indian(east Indians) will understand the title of this blog. It is something we hear at least once in a day. Not to say if you or someone in your family is of the marriage age. This is how we define color in our society, wheatish, golden brown, yellowish etc., We define our colors in almost every color present in the color pallet except for one color, and again we know what color it is, ‘BLACK’. Isn’t it something strange for a country where more than 70% of the population falls under the color category ‘Black’?
When I was in university, I used to organize and participate in most of the dramas and other events. One can always see my name on the notice board (There are many instances when my name was on the board for other wrong reasons too :P). Within the next couple of hours I could notice a suffix written in front of my name, ‘Blackie’. Though I never gave importance to it, I was very keen to know who was the great person who gave me such a wonderful title even before i graduated. When I came to know who it was, I was totally surprised. Obviously he was not an admirer of me, he was also not an arch enemy of me. But I can say that we were not into good terms. So I can understand why he did that. But its not over there. This particular guy who did this, did not even fall into the so called Indian color system, I mean wheatish, golden, silver, magenta, red, rose blah blah… whatever except black.
A couple of years passed by, I grew and also freed myself from the so called Indian color system. This happened in our hostel mess, where we had a cook from one of the Northern states of India. I was one of his favorite students. And you all know what it means to be a favorite student to a cook *hehe*. He often used to worry about his future and would say that he would have been in a good position if he had a degree. He also used to say that he would have been in top position if he had a degree for he was so FAIR(!!!) that it would have not been an issue for him to get to the top position. He also often used to tell me to somehow lighten my skin so it would be easy for me in future!!!
Also I had this really good looking roommate, who was obsessed with fairness and made our room into a cosmetic store. He bleached his face often, applied all sort of creams. I do saw a considerable amount of change in his skin tone. But I felt that he was more attractive when he was dark. When i told him this, he too felt the same, but he said that he wanted to be fair because he can get a girlfriend!!! Then there was this junior guy who spent thousands per week to lighter his skin tone.
These are some examples about boys. I never knew what happened inside girls hostel, but i can bet it would have not been lesser than this.
And seriously people should not be blamed for this, we should also look into our cinema industry, unfortunately which happens to be the biggest influence in our youths life. It is all about good looking. And for some strange reason we see that people in these movie are considered good looking only if they had pale skin. I am not saying that we do not have dark skinned actors/actress in our cinema industry. But most of the commercial movies, which reach the common man, have main characters that are light skinned.
We do have commercials for fairness(!!!) products which show dark skinned people as losers and once they become light skinned (obviously by using their fairness product) they reach heights in their life. These kind of advertisements not only influence people but also affect kids who are already with loads of problem. It is necessary for parents to educate children about these factors. Unfortunately our parents are also obsessed with the color system.
Not to say, the Indian fairness products have introduced their own color pallet system so people can compare their skin tone using it(!!!). And if one notes, the darkest color in that strip is lighter than the skin color of most of the Indians.
These are just small examples of how we Indians are obsessed with fairer skin. I know there are many blogs and articles on this issue. This is one of them. Just my small objection to those color obsessed racists and to show them that there is one more Indian guy who objects their racist behavior upon themselves.
