Rubbing a warm, damp towel on the face will not lighten skin tone. Take it from me. I tried it at age ten. Unaware of my complexion, or anyone’s complexion for that matter, I vowed to lighten it after I heard my mother and our neighbor, “Aunty,” label my skin tone “namkeen.” This Urdu word means savory, but when used for skin tone namkeen is somewhere between dark and very dark. Categorically not fair. Not light skinned, not even close. Up until then I didn’t know namkeen. I just knew people as friendly, fun, old, mean, kind, bore, nerds. Skin tone, nah, I was blind. Just as I am car blind to this day. I must peer closely at the insignia to tell the make, the model of a vehicle and still mix up the wing-like M—Mitsubishi, Mazda?
We moved into the house next to Aunty’s in Lahore when I was nine or ten. Aunty was married to a feudal landlord. They had three children, daughter-son-daughter, and a legion of domestic help, armed guards who guarded the high front and back gates to their house. Aunty’s husband’s agricultural lands, fleet of intercity transport buses, and I don’t know what else had brought them wealth. Her husband had never been to college, dabbled in politics at one time, and I think lost an election for a local council seat in his village.
Aunty was the educated of the two, a Bachelor of Arts from Lahore College. This, at a time when girls fell like dominoes to arranged marriages on turning sixteen, some even before that. Beautiful and buxom, Aunty married “late” and “luckily” had no in-laws. Her husband had lost both parents in an accident when he was still a boy. His siblings, never heard of or seen, lived in the village.
Aunty’s daughter nicknamed Bobby and I became friends, as did Mother and Aunty. We enjoyed many an early evening chai with them before the men returned home from work, meetings, or wherever they were in the world. We always met at Aunty’s house. In the five years we were neighbors, Aunty and Bobby came to our place only once; I don’t remember the occasion. Aunty and Bobby’s movement seemed controlled. They vacationed in London and Dubai but that did not count because when in Lahore, they stepped out only in one of their chauffeured cars, hidden behind tinted windows. Why did Aunty or Bobby not walk a few paces to our place? I don’t know, but I do remember feeling sorry for Mother. My father took our only car to work. Mother would putter out to the market once or twice each week in the three-wheeled, un-silenced rickshaw because she could not trust the “help” to pick out the best produce and price.
Mother shared anecdotes from our evening teas at Aunty’s with my father. It was hard to avoid details of their luxurious lifestyle. My father was mostly amused, his eyebrows rising in disbelief. If my parents were envious of Aunty and her husband’s wealth, they didn’t let it show.
One evening, Mother and Aunty talked about the inevitable skin pigmentation during pregnancy. Aunty pointed to the dark butterfly-like patch in the hollow of both her cheekbones, its wings reaching under her eyes making her look dark, even though she was light skinned. She displayed the back of her hands to prove it. Indeed, the light skinned hands gave her away, as hands always do. That evening, both mothers assessed their daughters and assigned them skin tones.
I got namkeen. Savory. Bobby got “saaf rang,” meaning clean complexioned. If she was “clean”, then what was I?
Eyes on my face, Aunty consoled mother that my skin would turn light as I grew older. I remember the scrutiny. Not knowing what to do with my face—do I smile, or not, look at both women or look away, pout or let my mouth fall, show interest, or pretend I didn’t care—I buried my face in a cushion. I feel the same tightness in my face today when I’m in front of a camera, even if for a silly selfie, knowing I am exposed. Exposed to someone’s gaze, judgement, comment.
Bobby was three years older than I was. At age ten, thirteen felt like a generation. She always got to go first. Her breasts plumped out first, her zit got squished out first, she used the Neutrogena facewash first, the hot water bottle for her periods, and the bra with the tiny red and black bows.
The only “first” I was offered that I refused, was a full body wax. I would sit beside Bobby to keep her company as she lay undressed under a sheet on her bedroom floor. The “waxing-woman” called in by Aunty once every six weeks, worked on my friend’s body from under the sheet. Ssshhck. The denim wax strip yanked out fine hair and follicle that the woman showed us before she folded it and put it inside a plastic bag to recycle. Running her hand over my calf one day, the waxing-woman said, “Choti bibi, let me wax your arms and legs just once, and you will be rid of body hair for life.” I shook my head. No way. I was working hard to grow up, a baby-soft body is not what I wanted. But my thirteen-year-old friend followed through this rite of passage into her teenage years with baby skin.
Aunty’s husband received visitors from his village, his lands all day, all evening. Cars lined our street at all hours. The drivers and bodyguards grouped at a corner, smoked bidis, and twirled their bushy mustache between sips of hot, sticky-sweet tea. Waiting for their sahibs, they took up more space on the street than the cars.
One evening, Aunty asked mother to make sure I was “properly dressed” when I came to their place, which was pretty much every afternoon. Properly dressed meant a shalwar kameez that covered my limbs. Bobby whispered to me that the drivers and guards on our street had made lewd remarks when they saw me in my dress running over the few paces from my place to theirs. I remember how my face burned.
I was not even eleven.
Shame turned into guilt. Then came anger, but that was years later.
I listened to Aunty and my mother comment on other women’s skin tone. “She’s not fair, but she is good natured,” “She is a doctor, just a little dark,” “tch, the poor girl has such a pukka tone,” “so okay, she is not fair, but she has given the family grandsons.” Educated, traveled, enlightened mothers of eligible single sons had no qualms about their preference for a light skinned wife for their sons, even when their own daughters were dark. Mother would say “a fair skin conceals many flaws,” a multi-layered aphorism. A girl’s fair complexion concealed an awkward nose, a financially modest background, a thick waistline, an unpleasant temperament. A light skinned divorcee had better chances of finding a match than a dark-complexioned single, or “god forbid” divorced girl.
Typically, a professional matchmaker or mutual friend would arrange for an eligible boy’s mother to be invited to tea at the girl’s house. The boy’s mother would measure up the “girl,” watch her roll out the tea trolley bedecked with sweet and savory delights, pour out tea, serve, exchange pleasantries, and always, inspect closely her complexion from under the makeup. If the boy’s mother liked what she saw, she invited the girl’s family for tea to her place. If not, she would say thank you, and go quiet. The tea trolley would be set again, waiting for the next visitor. The light skinned girl endured fewer “visitors” because she got picked quickly.
Years later, when I joined the feminist movement, Fair & Lovely, did not make it to the picket line—we picked our battles and demonstrated against the discriminatory so-called shariah “family laws,” demanded the minimum age of marriage for girls be raised from puberty to at least eighteen, fought for women to have the right of custody of their children after divorce, cried out for the repeal of the law that required a rape victim to bring four witnesses to prove she was raped. Advertisements of the head-turning, fair skinned, perfect woman, effortlessly keeping house, kids, husband, his parents always delighted, continued to explode on TV screens of every dark and fair skinned girl’s living room. And mind.
Bobby mixed two-parts liquid hydrogen, one-part ammonia in a bowl and dabbed it on her face with a cotton ball to bleach her facial hair. I followed suit and squealed with delight to see the hair on my face turn “gold.” But they did not turn light enough for me to climb out of the namkeen category. Bobby then prescribed washing the face five times every day, scrubbing it with a warm damp towel to lighten the skin. I did as I was told, washed and scrubbed my cheeks red. It didn’t work. Perhaps I gave up too soon.
I stayed namkeen.
Photo by Brands&People on Unsplash
