A poem by SIMRAN DIVATIA.

The nurse, in worried tones

whispers to my mother

“but your daughter is so dark,

what will people say?”

I had not been alive for a single day

before I was nothing more

than the shade of my skin,

and as I grew up, and it grew light,

something still didn’t sit right,

that people praised the change,

as though fair was seen

as the greatest thing a girl could be.

Featured image from Brick Lane, directed by Sarah Gavron, 2007

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