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
