All's Fair in Love and War

A guy is spotted in a ladies hostel trying to get his hands on a Fair and Lovely tube. Another is "thankful" that there is something to take care of him or rather the colour of skin while he's at work. Whats' all this fuss about? Frankly it gives me a complex. Isn't brown a respectable and acceptable color anymore??

When a leading actor decides to play brand ambassador, its a surprising turn of events in a culture that has had a song extolling black, a national award winning one at that. It is only now that we men can possibly feel the angst that so many millions of women across the nation would have felt time and time again, when color was the reason for rejection and dejection. No, I am not playing feminist here. It's just the complex getting to me. Its pretty scary actually. Long gone are the days when men were referred to as dark and handsome. Its now dark and therefore not handsome. Songs like "Fear of the Dark" take on a totally new meaning. In all fairness, this is truly a dark age for colored people.

In a couple of generations people will be seen grafting white skin and couples will be altering the genes of the child in the womb, to make sure that it is born fair. A couple of centuries later kids will be queueing up in museums, to get a glimpse of the preserved body of the "dark" uncle. And maybe that's when the darker shade will make a spectacular comeback, for only when something goes totally out of vogue will it stand a chance to storm back into fashion. Isn't the seventies celebrated now in terms of fashion and culture. For all that you know, the Europeans might be first to convert to blacks and browns, tired of the homogeneity in their environs. And then we will try to ape them and start converting too. Maybe that's what it will take for colored people to be respected, for the native Americans and British to be colored themselves.