The Stranger Who Was Myself (1)

A new series of Unlearning posts about my body, politics, race and culture.

Chapter 1: Skin

I am not used to the sun on my skin. In my life so far, I have kept my skin away from those rays for reasons that have been imposed on me and for reasons I have grown like weeds. And yet, despite the carved in beliefs of 43 years, I am sitting on a sun lounger in Gran Canaria wearing a bikini.

For the first time in forever, I am not hiding.

What causes someone to shroud her body for so long? It’s a tale told by many women, so I hope you won’t be bored of the inevitable soup made up of culture, society’s standards and fat. Here it is.

I am primary school young and I have already heard praise for my light skin. As an Asian girl, my light skin is prized, it is commented on. It isn’t a surprise, mind you. My father’s mother, and his grandmother both wore their light skin like a medal. There is a picture of my great-grandmother on the wall of my grandmother’s house and it is said, by those who don’t look too closely, that I resemble her. They mean we have the same skin.

My mother’s family also have light skin. So why the relief when I am born fair? Because of the risk posed by my father’s father’s side of the family. They are swarthier, hairier, darker.  Some say that our surname, Kara, means black and comes from the fact that Dada (my grandfather) was shades darker than was desirable. His brothers are all darker shades of brown, made darker still by their lives in East Africa under a sun as hot as the sun in India.

So, there was a chance that I could have been darker. But I was born fair and therefore, I was seen as beautiful.

I now know this is colourism, but when I was little, I didn’t know that word.

What I did learn is that light skin needs preservation. So I am given something of a spa experience with all natural products to keep my hue as pale as possible. There is a lemon, cut in half, and scrubbed on my skin. The acidity is said to keep me fair and the rind is said to exfoliate any troublesome dark skin cells away.  There are strawberries for the same reason. Then the oozing, pungent mixture of chickpea flour and water, spooned to a yellow paste. It goes on stone cold, then sets like plaster.  It’s the taking off the mask that counts: you don’t wash it away gently, you rub it off dry, taking with it a layer of your skin. I am always undeniably smooth after each application and removal.  And I stay light skinned.

We are never told to stay out of the sun explicitly, but if we do catch the sun, there is a strong chance someone will exclaim, “She’s turned black!” I can’t pretend there is no racism in their words. My family, Indian migrants to East Africa in the early twentieth century have caught racism from white colonisers. Black is low to them, black is poor. So if we darken, we might be seen ‘like them’.

These elders, with their ways, have resigned themselves to me darkening over the years. As soon as I become responsible for my own body at 18, I do not try to bleach my face with fruit. I refuse to Indian hummus myself - mostly because I can’t be arsed, people would think that was weird in a shared bathroom at university, and also because I want to know my own skin.

So I get to know it. It is expansive, and a warm shade of light brown. I have hated it and hidden it for a long time, maybe since I realised that my armpits were pigmented and dark. From my mid-teens, I stop wearing short sleeves (and never sleeveless) and I stop putting my arms in the air.  It is uncomfortable and I know I am ashamed. But I don’t want people to see my armpits are have dark patches, because the women I see in films, adverts, TV shows - they wear sleeveless tops all the time and have flawless pale skin under there. Not a single blemish.

I scrub. I try to excoriate it all away. It doesn’t go.

The back of my neck is also pigmented, and the inside of my thighs. My neck is a particular source of anxiety. It has been pointed out by those closest to me as a problem. I have been asked: is it dirt? Is your neck dirty? I check my clothes for the telltale signs that I haven’t washed enough. Nothing there.

I wear my hair, long as it is at this point, down to hide it. I wear collars in whatever temperature I am in. It is my neck alone, no one else’s, a private beast.  I do not open my legs for anyone except for in the dark. It will be years before I let anyone see the moon-seas of dark cells there.

My unclothing happens in stages. I cannot pretend that I whip everything off and stand there, an Indian Raquel Welch, by the side of a pool. First I let my ankles out. My trousers can be short (but not short enough the see the backs of my knees, I am not there yet). My sleeves stay long until my late thirties. But soon I am too hot, and I have to make a choice - sweat or reveal. So I reveal body part by body part. Elbows (ashy), upper arms (flabby and stretch-marked). Then one day, In lockdown, I wear a sleeveless playsuit. In my garden, at a time where I know no one will see me, I let the sun kiss my skin for the first time. My legs drop apart.

We go on holiday.

This sun lounger doesn’t let me hide. I look at the bodies walking past me, on the way to the pool, or to the bar. I see the pigmentation, the moles, the sagging, the stretch marks. I see scars and hair.  At first, my shrouding continues, but in a shorter cover-up that I have scoured shops for. Light enough to be comfortable, mid-thigh short. My legs are paler than the rest of me, because this never happens. They do not have access to the sun.

And the next is to sit and not worry about how it rides up. Then the next is to take it off and close my eyes, so I don’t see anyone staring.

When I open them, in nothing but my bikini, I see no one is staring.

As if it knows, my skin drinks the sun, starved of this warmth and light. It is golden butter, it is being washed in the first rays of this new day. I write about it.

Who knew that I would be honey-coloured

In the light of a nearly equatorial sun?

That my legs would glisten goldenly

Plump with softened buttery cream.

Who knew I could be this woman

With skin exposed to the bluest sky?

Dipped in melted toffee, or caramel

Then cushion-kneaded to ochre dough.