Ritisha Thakur; Class: 11; Loreto Convent Tara Hall; Category Classes 9-12; Winner: Third
‘I want you
To colour me blue
Anything that takes to make you stay
Only seeing myself
When I’m looking up at you’
I walk down the street, my earphones plugged into my ears, my phone in my pocket at I look up at the clouds above me.
Dense, dark clouds, almost the same colour as my skin, hiding any hint that it’s still day, rumbling with thunder indicating the arrival of the oncoming storm.
I kept walking till a drop of water landed on my nose, then another and then another.
I looked around and ran towards the nearest rain shelter, which was already occupied by a few people. As I entered I saw an elderly lady move to the corner.
I smiled shaking my head, but I was used to it by now.
After all, it has been centuries. Centuries where humans developed and evolved but they haven’t changed.
You must be confused, as I speak like I’m an immortal, which I am, so let me introduce myself.
I’m Krishna. The god of compassion, tenderness and love.
It’s okay if you are surprised, many people are, because they think that they know who I am, but they don’t.
But we won’t talk about that today, it’s a tale for another time.
Currently I’m visiting the earth as a fifteen year old boy. I look at a shop in front of me, a place for selling groceries, and then I look at the billboard placed on the roof, of the shop, directly in front of me.
Another fairness cream’s advertisement.
Mortals. I still remember the time Brahma created them. They were just made to live and love. There was nothing hard about these tasks, but as the decades went by, they have surprised us.
I’ll break it down for you to understand it easily. And what’s a better example then your own self?
Krishna. My name. It means black or dark, but almost every portrait I’ve seen of myself, portrays me as blue skinned.
I won’t say it’s not true, as a baby I was fed poisoned milk which indeed gave my skin a bluish tinge, but it didn’t make me blue.
Blue represents infiniteness which may be another reason, humans view me as having blue skin, but when the blue becomes as light as white, it does get racist.
But I won’t mind, because humans are meant to make mistakes and learn from them.
But it hurts when they don’t, it hurts when they tear each other apart on the basis of skin colour, when they don’t learn and inflict more harm on others.
Human skin colour wasn’t any kind of indicator of superiority. Neither was any other body feature like eyes, ears, nose, lips etc, but somehow, humans have made them a criteria for superiority.
Skin colour and other body features were distributed to humans so they can adapt well in their environments.
Dark skin was given to people living in regions with extreme heat so their skin doesn’t get sun burnt, dark hair was meant to prevent the sun to damage people’s head, bigger eyes were provided to see a wide range, whereas light skin and hair was to absorb maximum heat from the sun, and smaller eyes to prevent fast winds to hurt them.
But somehow as time passed, light hair, light skin and pretty eyes were criterias for superiority and prettiness.
Aryans in Germany and India are referred to as pure bloods, when they are actually not natives of the land. Just because they are fair does not make them superior or give them any right to impose that they are superior than anyone.
The lady sitting in the corner keeps staring at me, clutching her purse and bags tightly in her hands, as if any second I’ll snatch them and run away.
I smile at her but she doesn’t notice.
Anyways if we just talk about modern India, people here have a major skin colour complex, which might have been funny, hadn’t it been so harmful and toxic.
Kids, from a very young age, even if not taught directly, pick up on facts like dark skinned people are inferior to light skinned people and must be treated that way.
It’s more heartbreaking when parents and peers shun and compare their own kids and friends on basis of skin colour.
Such kids might be possessing great talent, but develop an inferiority complex, hindering then from achieving the greatness that awaits them.
Everywhere you look around you can see advertisements by companies trying to sell their own fairness products, especially targeting girls.
Even most of the matrimonial advertisement ask for ‘fair’ brides to be.
It’s as if fairness, long hair and doe eyes are the benchmarks of being pretty!
It’s wrong.
Everyone is born pretty, both inside out.
If you ask a mother and who is the most prettiest child in this world, she’ll say it’s her own, it won’t matter if the kid has light skin or dark skin, a small nose or a big nose, crooked teeth or straight teeth, big eyes or small eyes. To her it’ll just be a bundle of joy and happiness. The prettiest creature she has ever seen.
Discriminating and shunning people on the basis of their race, of course, it mentally scars people, but sometimes the opression is too much, and sometimes it turns physical too.
Dark skinned girls, especially in so called high class households are mistreated and abused, just because of their skin colour.
I kept looking at the elderly lady. She seemed sick and weak, but every time her eyes met mine she turned away.
Oh and Indian mindset about racism isn’t limited to just Indians too, it runs deeper than that, they have prejudiced opinions about non-indians too.
Indian tourism blooms during festivals as foreigners are interested in Indian culture, but oh bizzare humans!
They glorify white foreigners, try to act nice to them, offer them their services as they are getting paid for it, try to act like them, even if they make a fool of them in a process.
But the atrocities inflicted on dark skinned foreigners is something I’ll never understand. They stare at them like they’ve never ever seen anyone with dark skin before. They glare at them as they were the ones who ruled them and robbed them. They discriminate.
I look up the schedule for the timing of buses. The next bus arrives in 5 minutes, so I wait.
I watch as a little girl walks with her mother, giggling while skipping on the road as the rain stops. She jumps in a puddle formed near the shop as the muddy water splashes on the mother’s white clothes.
The mother looks angry now, scolding the little kid, who looks like she’s about to cry.
Why? Just because her white clothes are dark now?
White is the colour of purity, thus I understand why humans would see it as such, but black, the colour of Ma Kaali, is a colour that represents what’s beyond all forms. Even if so skin colour isn’t what defines a human. It’s their values and morals.
An Asian could be just as much of a good person as an African or an European. Their races don’t define them.
Humans can be a bit foolish when they fail to see this, but all of them aren’t. Some of them are hopeful and ambitious souls who, when speak of something, they do achieve it.
These people now at the motive of not only, not being racist but being anti-racist are going lengths to achieve their goal.
They spread love, not hate, and thus I help. I heal.
I try to spread the message that race does not define one. It doesn’t define their values, morals and motives. It does not define their function and roles in society.
People should be identified as human beings and not be identified by their race or what they look like or other racial stereotypes with no base.
Human society today is judgemental when it comes to people and who they are, what their race is, where they belong from or what they do. Humans are at fault when they determine a person’s potential by their race. Human society has influenced them to think and act a certain way and if you don’t think, look or act the same, then society frowns and looks down upon you. They expect you to live up to all racial stereotypes as if they matter. They don’t.
Time and again I’ve said it and I’ll say it again. Nothing defines you more than your acts.
Racism is real, but so is hope. I can assure that one day everything will be better.
But for now I see the bus coming towards us.
There are more people at the shelter than there were when I arrived. There is a hustle among them to get on the bus and reach their destination.
The elderly lady starts rushing towards the bus too, but falls. People don’t notice, the bus is about to leave. I walk to her and help her up. She’s apprehensive as I dust her clothes and bags but doesn’t protest.
I walk her to the bus, seat her in the reserved seat and then I start to walk towards the window.
The bus reaches its destination. People get off and I do too. Someone clutches my forearm before I leave.
“Thank you” she says and smiles. She is now more at ease.
“There’s no need to thank me” I shake my head, smiling myself. “It’s what I was supposed to do.”
She smiles again. “Blue colour suits you” she says and looks at her wrist watch. “I’ll have to leave now, my son might be here for me any minute, it was nice to meet you” she says and walks away waving at me.
I smile, walking in the opposite direction, towards another destination, another person and another blue that awaits me.
