I still remember the amusement with which I regarded the shoe magnets my nephew’s mother ordered in a desperate maternal bid for the boy four inches too short for someone his age. Free with these magnetic soles, ‘validated’ by pseudo-scientific babble that promised noticeable growth, was a fairness cream, a product I regard with more than just a little contempt. The tube of what could only have been Fair & Lovely was whisked away by my aunt’s maid. I was dumbfounded by the fact the woman who spent her day commuting by train, walking under the brutal sun chose a fairness cream over say sunblock. These products, ludicrous as they seem, are consumed by the populace, educated and otherwise, a sign that the dissatisfaction on which capitalistic societies thrive is still in full swing.

If it isn’t pimple or wrinkle creams and diet pills, it’s fake tans and fairness creams. Subject as I was to the scrutiny of well-meaning relatives at family dos, I recall the unforgiving lip-curl at the sight of a tanned girl child. And it’s not because I’ve been taught by some firebrand feminists or something; I prefer to remain ideologically promiscuous on most matters. But there’s something so maddening about fairness creams, talcum powders and sun-kissed tans hidden in tubes that takes the capitalist dictum of ‘wanting what you can’t have’ and creates a potent racial and consumerist mixture people love to swathe themselves in.

That dark-skinned people crave paler shades across the epidermal spectrum and that the Caucasian race would collectively risk cancer for a leathery, wrinkled tinge is hardly a new discovery. But this cross-cultural axiom somehow managed to raise more than a few expertly plucked-eyebrows when it started targeting New Age machismo. It was all dandy when Priyanka Chopra was dumped by Saif Ali Khan for the fairer bonny lass Neha Dhupia in a soap opera style advert. It was seemingly obvious that he would eventually return to the lissome post-Ponds White Beauty with lycopene-countenanced beauty at the end too. But when SRK began endorsing fairness creams crushing the tall, dark and handsome mantle that Indian males have banked on, the Indian intelligentsia suddenly labelled it problematic.

So bizarre and yet epidemic is this desire for fair skin in India that there is an actual demand for firangi sperm. It’s baffling that couples that have difficulty conceiving and are obviously desperate to spawn, actually visit donor banks and ask for the best swimmers among foreigners. Michael Jackson’s ‘I’m not going to spend my life being a colour’ protests obviously went unheard in this neck of the woods. And these weren’t the first whimpers of dissent either. Shakespeare was probably the first progressivist. ‘If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head,’ said the griping bard who was probably more concerned with debunking literary traditions than beauty myths but who seemed to be squelching the age-old belief that fair is beautiful.

Most think it’s a colonial hangover, a legacy of the Raj and its trickle-down Elizabethan belief that fair skin is indicative of a beautiful, intelligent and kind person. But some dug a little deeper and found that this colour-consciousness actually traces back to Vedic times. Miniature paintings and other cultural remnants have always painted royalty or the Brahmanic class fair and the working class dark which in its inception could have been anthropologically sound. The working class was bound to be dark-skinned, toiling in the subcontinent’s torturous sun while the elite few were sheltered from it. This unthinkingly simple and obvious classification, however, gathered moss and stereotypes over the years till it gained enough momentum to become discriminatory. Most advertisements today give credence to this stereotype as witnessed by the fact that the house help is (for the most part) of a darker hue than their employers.

On the other hand, you only need stop by Baga or Anjuna or your pick of the beach-lot in Goa to find tourists lazing in the sun trying to get the just the right amount of sun. Anywhere between a tan and a sunburn I imagine. Watching the fake bakes, I wonder why the colour of anyone’s skin is even consequential. It’s anatomical and scientific and we live in a Post-Colonial era and Obama is president elect and Sheetal Mallar is still the hottest model that India has produced…at least that’s the way I see it. Yet matrimonial ads seek out wheatish complexioned brides, fair models get paid better and a comedian actually said, ‘Now that Obama’s president, will they still call it The White House?’ Political correctness be damned. I’m as likely to laugh at a sexist, racist, adipose-ist joke as the next person but it definitely does make you wonder how matters of skin tone stand in the 21st century.

It’s not a black or white issue any more. Mira Nair explored this in her racially charged film Mississippi Masala. Forced to break-up with his girlfriend of Indian origin, Denzel Washington confronts her father saying ‘Your skin is just a few shades lighter than mine.’ Why then are we still militant about the colour of our skin? NRIs usually return with a pinkish glow they clutch on to. The girls I went to school with desperately cling on to their tans. And my grand-aunt’s powder-puffed face still looks a lot like an intricately wrinkled Venetian mask. I can’t even deny the fact that I want a honey coloured tan. But then I see models like Alek Wek who overcame a civil war at home and lived as refugee abroad and is still more comfortable in her own skin than most people. And I realise the best use for my grandmother’s box of Yardley is still the carrom board waiting to be waxed smooth for another game.

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