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Learn to live with being called ‘kaalu’ in India

Sammy

You were called Kalu, dear Sammy, because you are dark.  

Like I am. Like Mr. Modi was long years ago when I first met him.  

Called that in school. Even a Reporter, one Gupta who is now a Member of the Editors’ Guild (Not Shekhar, I hasten to clarify) called me that in the corridors of the PIB. 

Learn to live with it when in India. Even Sholay, now termed s classic and not a curry western,  has he classic line which raises laughs still, Ab Tera Kya Hoga, Kaliya?.

And, dear Sammy, we are males. Ask dark Indian girls.

Next to Africa, we buy the most of Fair and Lovely and other bleaches.  If rich and powerful, we buy Japanese mushrooms which bleach us from the inside.  

Like Africans and Caribbeans, we were ruled centuries by the British, Portuguese, French, Dutch – in descending order- and they then were very white. Not now. 

When the Turks, the Mongolians, the Pathans ruled us, it was less so. Many of their soldiers, commanders, and governors were Abyssinians, Ethiopians. Black.

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