Kartika_Issue15

ISSUE 15 | SPRING 2013
email came yesterday. For long, I have noticed that Anya is no longer her
bright self and now I know it is because of the Self-Portrait! For your
reference I have attached the photo that shows the Self-Portraits of all the
children. There are twelve children in Anya’s class and their Self-Portraits
are shown in two rows in the photo. Now look at the girl at the end of the
first row. She is my Anya. You can see her name written under the Self-
Portrait: Anya Nayantara Nohria. Colour of Eyes: Black. Colour of Skin:
Brown. In her Self-Portrait, you cannot see exactly how beautiful she is. She
is only five years old and still learning to draw, but I attached a photo of her
so you can see for yourself. I attached a photo of myself as well, sitting on
my swing in my gulab garden in Udaipur. Please open all these pictures and
look at them carefully. Is there anything the same between the colour of her
skin in Anya’s Self-Portrait and the real colour of her skin or my skin?
Perhaps you will understand the horror more when you know where I am
from. I belong to the great Indian subcontinent, in particular, I was born in
the Lake City of Udaipur in the state of Rajasthan, which is in the
northwestern part of the country. For more than three hundred years, my
forefathers attended the court of the Maharanas of Udaipur who, you may
know, fought valiantly against the Mughals and preserved their land. My
ancestors, my great-great-grandfather and my great-grandfather, had their
own quarters in the famous Lake Palace in Udaipur, which is much bigger
than a church and made of white marble and has stood unmoving for
centuries while the clear waters of the lake rise and fall around it.
Historically, the females in my family, including my mother and her mother
before her, have always possessed skin smooth as silk and with the colour of
beaten gold, a colour sometimes called wheatish. Skin as valuable as
jewelry, skin the envy of every female in my country, skin meant to be
pampered and spoiled like a favorite child, skin that, never exposed to the
sun, remained undefeated by it. As a child, I would stand and look for a very
long time at the paintings, hanging high on the walls, of the ladies with their
marble skin, lying proudly on silk divans, being gently fanned by attendants
with long fans made from peacock feathers, and I longed with all my heart to
grow up so that I could be like them. I was born in 1982 but people will not
believe it when they see my face. They say in wonder, my dear Manju, you
look eighteen! My mother tells a story of how my skin was so milky as a
baby that she could see where I was on her bed at night even without a lamp
and how visitors would shade their eyes as if from the brightness when they
saw me. When I was twelve she showed me how to prepare a smooth paste
for anointing on my skin using milk that has retained its cream, grated
almonds, a little bit of gram flour mixed with turmeric, honey, and lemon
juice. When I came to America, my mother told me, Manju, every day you
must perform the ritual with the freshly prepared paste and every day you
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