My Expressions

Yes, I am Kali!

I have always been dark-skinned.

My grandmother tells me that when I was born instead of smiling at the first look at my face, my mother’s face contorted into a mask of distaste. And the first word she uttered was Kali (dark). My father came in to see me and being the one who always finds beauty in every aspect christened me Krishnakali. But my cousins, mother and siblings were not as forgiving. And from Krishnakali, I became Kali the dark-skinned one.

My childhood has never been ‘normal’ and I attribute it to my skin colour. My sisters were fair and I was dark as polished ebony, and it was clear that I looked nothing like my father or mother. My grandmother consoled me saying that my grandfather was dark too. But knowing this did little to bereave my sorrow.

Little incidents began to take on appearances of massive happenings. Take for instance the day I asked my mother to read snow white to me. As soon as she got to the part that said “skin as white as snow”, she glanced at me, sighed and shut the book. She told me to get Black beauty instead. Looking back, I wonder whether she deliberately chose the title or was it by pure chance.

But this was not it. Visitors always gave a quick sideways look followed by a quick laugh when I was introduced as my father’s daughter. I tried various fairness creams that were supposed to make my skin radiant but quit using them after reading about the after-effects. As a student of 11th std I studied Shakespeare’s ‘What is Sylvia?’ and kept stumbling over ‘fair’ in the third line of the first stanza. I remember wondering whether heaven lent grace only to the fair. What about His darker creations?

But when I graduated from college I decide to start life anew. I knew that I could not change the colour of skin but I knew that I could change the way people looked at me like a dark person. And the only way I could do this was by education. so I tried out for civil services and got into the police force. ever since then, there has been no looking back.

You would be surprised if I told you that ever since I joined the police, no one has ever called me Kali again not even in jest. But I wear the name as a sign of pride now.

I aspire to inspire dark girls who are now called Kali to one day, stand up and say “I am Kali…..and this is my story. You may shoot me down with your words but like the brown dust, I will rise. I rise, I rise, I rise.

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