A Blessing or………..!

The English love or prejudice for the colour white is too well known to need any emphasis here. We in India take pride in our wheat complexion , perhaps rightly so , and liken ourselves to the most perfectly made specimen of roti , heated to the right degree - neither left raw or under heated ( fair skinned races ) nor over heated (dark skinned races) . The anglicized Indians have often been referred to as the brown sahibs. For good or for bad I was ‘blessed' with a fair skin and may have been good looking and during childhood was an object of envy for friends and classmates ‘less endowed ’ in this respect. Nevertheless, they had nicknamed me “Angrez”.

I must have been just about four or five year old, when on a bright sunny Sunday, my father took me along to the Mall, Shimla to have a stroll. Walking towards the Mall, near the CTO Building , an English couple, coming from the opposite direction stopped to have a look at me, smilingly exchanged a few words with my father. The lady took out a blue colored water-ball with a rubber string attached (yo-yo) from her bag and touching me on the cheeks,gave it to me. Sounds flattering, doesn’t it!

The same white skin with passage of time has started giving trouble now. I am allergic to sun rays,cannot face the direct sun and mine is a furrowed face which makes me look older than actually I am . Even the hair-color which my wife is at pains to apply is of little help. It is now my turn to envy my ‘less endowed’ friends with wrinkle-free smooth skin with virtually no signs of ageing who can still pass for a “bhai sahib” instead of an “uncle” that I am called and made to feel even by the fairly old ones !