They say, “Fair is the only beautiful colour.” We say, “Take them on a tour!”

Being white is everyone’s dream, especially of people from South Asia, because from the time one is born, one is check-marked for marriage. Going to go on the usual rampage that points fingers at society that keeps promoting the idea of fairness and whiteness is kind of passe, so let’s focus on the people who choose to get victimized.

It is really, really difficult to rise beyond what is being propagated as beautiful and nice, but not impossible. Of course, the idea of ‘beauty’ only starts with colour and moves on to the shape of your nose, eyes, body weight and the list is endless. One can choose to be defined by them or not, it is an individual choice. The problem is with extremes; people who are tired of discrimination on the basis of colour are angry about being victims or there are others who try to harm themselves because they feel socially ‘unaccepted’.

This is not to deny that the movements to bring in other shades as beautiful hasn’t helped, it has, but once we get anger and hatred into the picture, we become like those we are fighting against, blind. Let us choose to look at this in a different light – this is a probable solution for most of our conflicts with colour.

Here’s a video that appreciates the shades in South Asia – it avoids ‘white’, now this is reverse discrimination. Let’s not deny that white exists, it does and so do other shades.

If someone thinks fair or white is beautiful, that’s fine. But fair being beautiful does not automatically suggest that black isn’t beautiful. And if someone means that, there is no need to be angry about it, they just don’t know any better! We as human beings try to define everything – A is aesthetic, B is not; C is nice, D is not and so on. This is a never-ending categorization and as long as human beings exist, they will continue to ‘box’ things because it is easier that way. We all want things to be easy and that’s the reason for categorization or boxing.

But it becomes a problem when we think that that is the only way of being or seeing, which leads to judgment. We just need to be AWARE of the convenient route that we have chosen and when a different situation presents itself we need to check on our convenient options. We forget to do that, because we have never seen anyone do it! So whenever we come across someone who discriminates on the basis of colour or feels guilty about their skin being a certain colour, the thing to notice is that they are unable to come out of their convenient choice.

It’s a prejudice only when you start believing in your convenient choices and start acting on them, because we feel that’s the only ‘right’ way to be. One can only say that such people are unfortunate, because they cannot appreciate all the colours nature has created. So next time you read a matrimonial ad that says, “tall, slim, fair” or meet a person who is stuck on a colour, don’t get angry. Know that it’s time to take them on a tour of nature – because in nature when white exists, it stands with the other colours.