Our girls are badgered day in and out by multi-national companies to become fairer ad infinitum. And guys too are now targeted. Duskiness is hated and derided. Open any marriage columns in news-papers and you will find the requirement from would be brides: they have to be fair and slim and convent educated. It is passé to say that English-medium education is the most coveted education that one can provide to an Indian kid today. There are thousands of Spoken-English schools all over the land. In short, we have to become brown sahibs. All this when the British are turning to the curry for joy!

Here are some harrowing experiences:

a)Young man enters an up market restaurant in Kolkata, the guards ask him to leave. His faults? He wears slippers, is unshaven and the sin of all sins: he is dark. Luckily his girl-friend inside is dressed properly for the restaurant. She is fair and beautiful. She comes to the rescue of that young man, her future husband, and they leave the restaurant in bitterness. Black suited sahibs did not allow brown people in casuals. But while they come out they see a white woman in shorts, slippers and a T-shirt being welcomed in. Have you noticed something: hotel-staff speak only in English? And even the visitors go along with that. I am not speaking about those instances when there may be a language problem, but even when both the staff and the visitors have the same vernacular.

b)Same couple visits a chain-book store in Kolkata regularly. The owners run hotels also. Mr. M there is very polite and helpful. Natty fair lady in specs breathes fire on any Indian who comes with her purse into the shop. Fine. Natty lady hates guys with bags entering the shop. Leave your bags on the security desk. Fine. Only thing, whites enter with whatever they choose. And natty lady is pleased as punch. When complained, natty lady did not bother replying to such hoi polloi. The couple does not go there any more. Mr.M’s is sidelined because he is fat, dark and only a native. People have to ask for Bengali books in English there. Such are the levels of sophistication in our country.

c)A study facility for students by a Foreign Embassy in Kolkata. Yours truly and other blackie Indians have to be searched like animals before entry into the library. The guards are rude and the Indian staff at the reception hate talking in anything but English even with people who do not know the language. White nationals have no such checks. They come and go while we in our own country stand gaping. When complaints pour in, some Indian crony mumbles: it is all about security, you know. And if too much protests happen, then just get lost. So yours truly avoids the said library. How many places to avoid?

d)Old lady thrown out of a Tata bastion. She is not fair enough; she is just Indian; she is wearing slippers. Taj Mumbai is in India, but is it for Indians?

Alas! The shame of being a South East Asian and being condemned for being one by one’s sisters and brothers. I have had the same experience in Pakistan, Nepal and Dhaka. We equate beauty with skin-color.