How much is my skin tone worth to you?

I've been meaning to talk about this for sometime now...I work with clients from the colonial world and having been there recently I think I can be at liberty to say this...(well It is my blog and I would have said it anyways :P)...we Indians are the biggest hypocrites around. Now I borrow this phrase from a dear friend who loves the country just as much as I do but nonetheless falls into this category!!! 

Yes we are a country obsessed with fairness and all the beauty and virtue the fair tone symbolizes. Yes we will go large extents to make sure we fall in this so called beautiful category. Yes we will not let our kids play out in the sun and drown them in sunscreen before they leave and ubtan after they are back. Yes we will photo shop our pics to an extent that all our features are lost in the myriads of the contrast and brightness of light. Yes we will have saffron-laced milk 10 times a day before the kid is born and then force it have apples and beets for rosy cheeks (true story that...ah my good old childhood days). Yes we don't believe a word those fairness creams guys dish out, even if it's John Abraham speaking his need for them, but we will still go get the newest tube available in the market. And yes we will put up matrimonial ads like this to show civilization and progress are not 2 words that go hand in hand with the Dravidian society "Wanted, milky white tall beautiful girl, 18 years of age, from decent family" (that ad is demeaning at soooooo many levels that I'll make another post out of the whip lashes!!!)

We do all of this, but I don't wish to understand why do all this. The need to look gorgeous lies in every woman and the urge to look handsome lurks with every guy. Imagine a charcoal black aunty in the famed 'Mutai' pick saree? You cringe at the image right? Now imagine Katrina Kaif in the same thing...some of you men are already in la-la land right? I get it, even to get to the inner beauty most of us need to get past the outer beauty. It's OK. Manufacturing defect that god himself sent us with so it's all his fault not our kinds'. What I'd like to know is just cause you aren't fair toned does that make you any less eligible for the respect you deserve for your calibre and talents? 

I see this everyday and it hasn't stopped to boggle me even after 3 years now. Read some excerpts

Mail to the colleague(akka moi), not a subordinate even, an equal, sitting right next to you, with the access of a chatting tool and vocal chords that blare out for every other thing under the sun.

Subject Line : Send the last week's I-AM-STILL-ALIVE report ASAP!!! EOM

Body : Nothing

Signature: Bland like the character

Mail to the lucky blokes sitting across 7 seas,again with access to the chatting tool and a brain that has segmented the upper class from the shudra class

Subject Line :  Last week's status report

Body : 

Hi Esteemed Gora Sahab,  

Kindly send over the I-AM-STILL-ALIVE report of last week immediately as I have some tasks to finish!!!!!!!!!!

Signature: Still bland like the character

OK I get that you are severely handicapped with English words in particular and common sense in general, that's no sin , it's OK, and you also think exclamation marks are indicative of your authority (the more the better types) but does it also mean that you have scant regard for the actual people who work with you, who you interact with on a daily basis and need to get along with  (not boss around)? Does it not mean that you are willing to bend over backwards in every form there is just cause the guy sitting elsewhere was not as blessed with melanin as the guys sitting around you are? The politeness and contriteness has to come oozing out only for the Goras and not for Brownies? And whatever you need maybe, don't you think others would need an explanation for your demands, especially when there is no direct reporting structure, however crippled you might be with your vocab? I used to seriously wonder why IBM spent so much on 'Communication Skills' training now I know but alas if only the people who actually need it knew it.

Why are people this way? Are the firang asses/arses better tasting than the native ones that you lick people enjoy licking them more? Does respect and common courtesy have to deteriorate according to the skin tone of an individual, in this gradient? You agree with me right Nigel(the famed Gora Sahab of our team)?

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Like I said, it boggles me! How we the so-called educated society still hold on to the age old class system and then cry foul when a guy from the colonial world so much as disapproves with what you had to say? Well never mind the Indian he/she anyways doesn't get a say in this, but still think about it...were we not ruled because we let people rule us? On the same note are we really free when we can't give up on the age old prejudices? I've been to the other world and I've seen how everybody is treated equally (like how it is professed in our Preamble); I've seen people being respected for who they are and not for what skin colour there genes gifted them. Make no mistake I don't say that we aren't looked down upon by the firangs, not all do it but do we really have to blame them? When we see some saying 'fraaaaandsips' do we not put up blogs about it? Then why point fingers only at the others and call them bigots? And honestly for the hypocritic society that we are shouldn't we really be looked down upon? I do and I don't care whose mature sensibilities I affect by saying so OK...so go shove!!!

Enough profundity(and profanity) for the day huh? What prompted this, I've found a new love for skirts (never mind that the boy thinks girls who wear skirts are sluts (*correction---- the boy wants me to say 'girls.... are perceived as sluts, don't ask me by whom)...yep I've punched him for it girls...so let your guard down) whilst I was at UK and now where them regularly to work. One such day stopped by at a local eatery for some idli-vada-sambhar trio and boy oh boy the celebrity treatment I got!!! This is tiny eatery mind you with like just 2 tables, and I have a special waiter waiting right there at my beck and call!!! Not that I wanted it or enjoyed the attention  (it was after all for some skin showing below my knees) but it prompted Paulie who was with me to say..."full memsahab treatement"!!! 

Would I get the same exalted treatment if I were a mother with one kid tugging at my pallu and the other dripping mucus, riding atop my shoulder, if I were wearing a saree torn at many a place and a non existent blouse? Mind you I can stay pay the very same 28 bucks in Indian rupees, which memsahab just did, for the food? No I think not. Yep hypocrites in all the sense of the word!!! 

On a not so cheerful note...cheers to my alomondy-chocolaty skin tone :D... I love it...I get to carry of an attitude on the dusky can: SEXY :P

mantener la sonrisa

 

P.S (What's EOM? End of message. I swear I'm sick of these acronyms!!! And yes I get the priveldeg of knowing that the message ended even before it started...I'm so grateful GAAD!)