Kali — The Dark One
I randomly met an artist who showed me a sketch she had made from her imagination that looked a lot like me. That sketch was her interpretation of Goddess Kali. Coincidentally, “kali” (uncapitalized, a derogatory term meaning dark skinned) was also the word used to ridicule me for my dark skin. This synchronicity transformed my life and put me on my path to fight colorism.
I’ve been ridiculed for being dark skinned all my life. The fair skin obsession in India doubled my self esteem issues as a teenager and I was constantly discriminated against because of my dark skin. The word “kali” (a derogatory term for a dark skinned girl) haunted me because it was the word used by most people to mock my skin color. It reduced my identity to my skin color and I spent my whole life running away from this word. Until I met Reva Pandit, who completely flipped this word around for me, and added a whole new perspective to my life.
Synchronicity
/sɪŋkrəˈnɪsɪti/
noun. meaning: the simultaneous occurrence of events which appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.
Meaningful coincidences. My life is full of these.
On a pleasantly cool January night, I was traveling in the ladies compartment of a Mumbai local train, headed home from a lovely night out with a friend. I was standing by the doors, feeling the wind in my hair (Mumbai locals have no AC and the doors stay open) and I noticed a pretty girl staring at me. I smiled at her and went back to being a dog, gaping at the sights of the city at night with my tongue hanging out, while the train rattled on its next destination. Few stops later, we caught each other’s eyes again, so I chuckled and nodded my head to do the “What’s up?” with body language. She moved from her seat and came up to talk to me.
She said, “Hey! Sorry I was staring at you. ”
“Haha no worries at all! I’m Seema.”
“I’m Reva and I’m an artist. The reason I was staring at you is because I drew this picture a while ago, from my imagination, and she looks exactly like you”
She showed me the picture. It was an intricate, mesmerizing, black and white sketch of a lady, who looked a lot like me even in the absence of color. The same wide nose, large eyes, long chin and m-shaped hairline.
I said, “WOW! This is a gorgeous sketch. And she does look a lot like me.”
“I know! This is so strange but so good!”
“Yeah, the probability of us meeting in a train like this, with a story like this is SO SMALL.. and it happened!”
“This sketch is my interpretation of the birth of Kali, the goddess. And you look so much like her, it just blew my mind and I knew I had to come talk to you. This picture has no color, but your skin color is also just like what Kali’s would be.”
And just like that, she changed the definition of the word “kali” in my life. For the first time, someone had called me Kali (capitalized, meaning the goddess Kali) and I felt nothing but proud. I had spent my whole life feeling sorry about being called kali and never once thought that I could just think of it as being like goddess Kali. Reva needed to walk into my life with a smile and tell me that I looked like her interpretation of Kali.
Kali is the Goddess of Time, Change, Power, Creation, Preservation, and Destruction. The word Kali also means the force of time, that existed even when the universe, as we know it, was not created. Her dark color thus signifies the beginning of time, when matter was absent. More amazing details about her are on Wikipedia obviously.
Reva said, “We should do something about this. Maybe we could meet sometime and I’ll try to paint your face like this”
“YES! YES! YES! Let’s do this!”
“Give me your number and we’ll do this.”
So we exchanged numbers and started talking. It felt nice. It felt easy. It felt comfortable unlike other first interactions. We didn’t need to impress each other or talk incessantly to prove our worth to each other. We just were what we were and we didn’t need a label.
Transformation
We decided to meet on Valentine’s day February 14th, at Reva’s friend’s house and she would paint my face just as it appeared in her imagination. It was a Sunday and my mom was lazing on the couch while I was getting ready to go. She asked me where I was headed and I had no way of explaining this to her, so I told her I was going to partake in an art project and that she should come along. She readily agreed when she heard that I was going to a stranger’s house alone, to get my face painted by someone I had met in the train. For some reason, I could completely understand why my mom was so worried, but my mind was completely at ease and excited about what was going to happen.
The sketch Reva had made was pen on paper, so on my way to her friend’s place, I wondered what I would look like. I thought she would probably paint my face white and then paint the black strokes over the white base. Her Kali also looked fierce and scary and I wondered if I could pull it off. Did I want to appear scary? As women, we are always portraying ourselves as either happy, sweet or sexy. No one intentionally puts a scary picture of themselves out there. I wondered about the audience of the pictures she would take and if the audience would dismiss me as too scary. Just at that moment, I remembered that the main point of this was Reva’s art and not me and I told my thoughts about appearances to take a hike.
When I got to the place, Reva greeted me warmly with a hug and we got to work. She had never done this before either. She usually paints large canvases and was painting a face for the first time. She had her black and white paint ready, and she took a long look at my face and said,
“Your skin color is so beautiful, I don’t want to spoil it by painting it white. We’ll directly draw with black on your face. That’s how Kali would be too.”
She was right. Kali was the dark one. She didn’t care about what the world had to say about her. Once again, Reva had no idea what she was doing to me with just her words. She was giving me courage to be me. She was teaching me to comfortable in my own skin and not care about the world, just like Kali would.
It took 8 long hours to finish the whole thing. I never thought that I could ever sit still for that long. It was a first for Reva too, but she powered through those 8 hours, drawing energy from the excitement of a new beginning. She switched between really fine brushes, eyeliner, and acrylic paint in cones to adapt to different levels of intricacies needed to paint my face. I had decided that I won’t look at the mirror during the process because I did not want to influence Reva even in the slightest way by reacting to what was on my face. I wanted to give her full freedom to do what she had envisioned.
Revelation
The final product was magical. I was spellbound when I saw myself at the end. It was unconventional, scary and fierce. It raised a proverbial middle finger to our beauty standards, because we unwittingly apply the same standards to goddesses too. Goddess worship is on the decline in our male dominated society, and even then the pictures of goddesses that we worship are all envisioned and created by men. In fair skin obsessed India, these pictures almost never have anyone with dark skin. And then there was Reva, a woman doing a modern take on Indian goddesses, redefining beauty and divinity, one stroke at a time.
In that moment, while I stared at my transformation into Reva’s Kali, I thought to myself:
“Main kali hoon. Kali Ma hoon main.”
(Yes, I am kali. Kali is me)
I knew I was going to channel Kali for the rest of my life. Every time someone calls me kali, I’m going to think of it as Kali and feel blessed. What they think of as my weakness, is my source of infinite power. Being the outcast gave me the ability to empathize with the “other”. Being ridiculed about my appearance made me stronger because that gave me thick skin and freedom from vanity. Being hated for no apparent reason gave me the ability to give love endlessly and impartially, expecting nothing in return.
“My Mother is the principle of consciousness. She is Akhanda Satchidananda;
indivisible Reality, Awareness, and Bliss. The night sky between the stars is perfectly black.
The waters of the ocean depths are the same; The infinite is always mysteriously dark.
This inebriating darkness is my beloved Kali.”
— Sri Ramakrishna
