Tenu kala chashma jachda ae
Jachda ae gore mukhde te
(Black glasses looks nice on you
Looks nice on your white face)

Hold up- only on a white face? Aw, really? Then I guess  I'll have to run down to the supermarket and get the most (un)effective whitening cream so I can be as 'fair & lovely' as Katrina. Maybe then that kaala chasma can jachda on my kaala mukhra too? Maybe then I can be considered worthy and beautiful and charismatic and elegant in the world? Maybe then people can deem me as someone respectable and influential?

Maybe then I can be allowed to live without receiving those scathing frowns from the fair-skinned women in the shoestore as I try on a vibrant pair of sandals that would be considered unsuited to the feet of a girl of my complexion.

Maybe then I can confidently take and upload pictures of my face online, bare and conspicuous, instead of posing with my back to the camera or hiding my face in my hair to try and look as if I'm being aesthetic and not really insecure of the word branded on my forehead and pointed at and agreed to by every onlooker: KAALI.

I am one of the kaali, sanwali, acne blotched, freckled faced girls whose discrimination you subconsciously connive while you mentally categorize us as someone lower than yourself because we aren't as flawless as you are, as quaint-looking as you are.

But it's okay. You don't know what you're doing either. You're just following the rhetoric passed down from one auntie to another, from one locker room joke to another, because that's supposed to be cool, right?

No. It is not okay. It is not cool. We are not for the amusement of your locker room jokes. We do not wear what we wear, flair what we flair, and do what we do to win your acceptance. But you've pushed us down so far, that you've cut us off from the opportunities we have struggled for, the respect we have sweat for, the laurels we have worked for, all because we were just one bar lower on your scale of worthiness. Your scale of being fair and lovely, clear skinned and flawless.

You've made us so desperate for your appreciation that we even try to alter our identities to suit your praise; we buy those creams you flash temptingly on the screen with promises of a fairer skin tone, we buy foundations and concealers and primers and highlighters and all the makeup in the world, in bundles to cover up what you've made out to be the bane of our existence.

What is it of ours that irks you so much that you can't believe we are your equals?

We have the same structure as you, the same brain as you, the same organs and cells and heart. Wait, no. We don't share the same heart. You broke your half away years ago when you first divided us.

You know what else you've created? A double patriarchy. Society divided men and women thousands of years ago, but now you've divided women into so many small, petty little categories, it makes me cringe.

So here we are. The fair and the dark. The eyecandy and the sourworm. The appraised and the belittled.

You, who are showered with compliments when you take out your bright new bird-themed kurti from Sapphire for a ride and me, who is eyed hesitantly as she enters the room with that very kurti, wishing so hard she could just fly off like on the little winged fellows embossed on her shirt.

You, who aunties run after to serve as beautiful brides for their incomparable and spoilt sons. The sons who've played an even bigger hand in patronising us as incompatible to their perfect requirements of a perfect girl with a perfect everything.

Dear aunties, we don't want any share of your misled and patriarchal, wonderful sons either.

Dear fair girls, we don't want to be included in your cliques if that means we have to pretend to be someone we're not.

Dear world, we do not believe that our complexion hereby makes us inferior, unworthy or ugly.

We are beautiful and smart and intelligent and funny and sappy and cheesy and fun and angry and lively and innovative and creative and wild. And it pities me to think it's taking you so long to accept that we are just like you.

The same God created us, our hands and feet and body and mind. The same God who you love and praise and bow to because of how his creation epitomize perfection so WHY, why aren't we part of that perfection?

Maybe one day I'll write a song where kaale chashme jachde sabte mukhre te (black sunshades look good on everyone's face instead of only a fair one), and maybe just maybe, you'll say yes.