The warm drops of rain that intermittently drip from the sky soon begin to fall in more frequent splatters that polka dot the ground. Charles and I squeeze under the black and silver-lined umbrella that I’d just bought, but our shoulders dampen quickly. We decide to take an auto-rickshaw rather than walk to the main road for dinner, which is what we usually do when we get too lazy to cook for ourselves. Before even negotiating the price with the auto driver, who is still chatting on his phone, Charles slides in and asks, “Meter?” The driver shakes his head, but we quickly agree on a price of 50 rupees. Not bad in this weather. The auto driver, rather young and in a soft red t-shirt, cradles his cell phone between his ear and shoulder. He turns on the engine and we rattle down the road in the rain.
He heads toward the path that runs parallel to the train tracks, slowly, the three of us bumping up and down roughly on the wet, pebbly road. The engine stops once, twice, and finally refuses to start again. Charles and I huddle in the middle of the back seat, staring at the pouring rain slowly flooding the lane from within the cocoon of the auto. The driver turns around and tells us he’ll call someone else to pick us up soon. We’re stopped on the left-hand side of the quiet road by a concrete wall. Lightning flashes overhead and the rumbling of thunder quickly follows, but we’re in no rush and our conversation remains silly, something about Charles’ imaginary waterproof cellphone. He’d lost his unimaginary touchscreen one almost a month ago.
As we’re talking, a white car speeds by much too quickly, and my line of vision is drawn towards it. It suddenly runs off the road to our right, and catching an impressive amount of air, it totals and ultimately lands on its side about 20 meters away from us. The three of us in the auto stare, uncomprehending, for the eternity of several seconds. An object that large shouldn’t have done a barrel roll so easily like a plastic bag caught by the wind. And an object that large with people inside should definitely not have been doing any rolling at all. Finally, Charles declares in a calm voice, “We should help them.” There’s no one else in sight on the road. I’ll admit, I was dazed for a moment, thinking That could have rammed right into us.
I open the umbrella as Charles and I walk toward the car. We have both watched too many movies and secretly fear that the car might explode like in some action flick. Of course, it doesn’t. I see a boy in a blue t-shirt with white lettering through the sideways windshield standing in the car, unable to get the door open, which is now above his head. It feels awkward and uncanny to be in such close proximity to this scene. No airbags were deployed in car. And I would bet that these boys weren’t wearing seatbelts. No one here really does. Charles manages to unlatch the door, and the boy climbs out. He then opens the back door and manages to help the other two boys out of the vehicle. They can’t be much older than 18 or 19. The one with the plaid button-up shirt from the backseat has lost his specs, his wallet, his phone, his slippers, which he keeps repeating to everyone. He emptily tells his blue t-shirted friend, “I told you you were going too fast man.”
Other men begin to gather, eight or ten of them maybe, a biker with his helmet still on, a tall man with an umbrella who begins to scold the boys, “You should be ashamed, going too fast….” A couple of men stare with equal curiosity at the foreign girl with the umbrella. I move back slowly from the car. Traffic momentarily slows. The boys look harried and peer around anxiously.
My first instinct is to call 911, although that doesn’t apply here and my phone is out of credit. But it seems the boys are anxious to tip the car back over before the police come and they get in trouble. Five men push the car back onto the muddy ground as the boy who lost his specs wanders over and asks his other friend, “Am I cut? I got hit by my specs.” “Here,” I interject, “let me see.” I softly move his face to the left and cover him with my umbrella. “Just a scratch. Are you okay?” I ask him. He tells me he’s fine and looks a tad annoyed by my unhelpful question.
I look for Charles, who by this point is rather drenched. It looks like someone dunked him upside down into a swimming pool. We look at each other and understand that it’s time to go. We walk back to the auto driver and tell him we’ll just walk home, Charles needs a change of clothes. He’s too soggy and muddy to be comfortable. As we walk back to the apartment, we decide that tonight, we’ll eat in instead.
If you want to know more about Bangalore traffic, take a glance at my first blog post.
Lately, I’ve been working at the Parikrma office close to my apartment, which is about a 10 to 15 minute walk away. As I enter the more residential areas near the office (which is in the basement of my boss’ huge stone house), I started noticing designs in what seemed like chalk decorously adorning the ground in front of the gates of many houses that I passed. There are a lot of small curiosities that I’ve come across here, and I thought blogging might be a nice chance to investigate them a bit.
These designs are called kolam in the south of India, specifically in Tamil Nadu where kolams hold significant cultural value. They’re known by varying names in different states: alpana in Bengal, chaukpurna in Madhya Pradesh, rangoli in Maharashtra and Karnataka, puvidal in Kerala, etc. Apparently, the traditional ritual is that every morning before sunrise, the ground in front of the house is swept and cleaned with water by a female in the family (back in the day, and perhaps still in rural areas, it’s also cleaned with cow dung, which is believed to have antiseptic properties). The kolam is then drawn on the damp ground so the design will stick better. I thought these intricate designs were done with sticks of chalk, but they are often made with rice flour or chalk powder (and sometimes red brick power for contrast against the white), which is dropped in a controlled manner between two fingers, which takes quite a lot of skill.
These designs are impermanent and are often smudged out during the day by people entering and leaving the house, or by the rain or wind. Therefore, drawing a kolam is a daily ritual. I read that drawing a kolam forces the woman to crouch and balance on the ground (a type of yogasana), therefore serving as a form of exercise to strengthen her back for the day’s work, although I’m a bit skeptical of that.
I would categorize kolams into two main types, by technique. One are line kolams, created freehand with various geometrical patterns. The other are pulli kolams, in which any number of dots, ranging from 4 up to 108, are placed in a specific sequence (rectangular, triangular, hexagonal, etc.) and then the dots are either joined by lines to make a decorative patterns, or the lines loop around the dots to create a design (this is called kambi or “wire” kolam).
The significance of the kolam
As I explained, kolam was often drawn with rice flour, which served as food for insects and small birds, and therefore the kolam symbolized man’s co-existence with and consideration for other creatures. Rice flour is also an offering to Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, love, and prosperity, and the kolam is drawn in hopes of welcoming these elements into the home.
Mahalakshmi
Kolam designs are closed, meaning they look like they are drawn in one continuous motion and composed of one, unbroken line. This closed line is supposed to prevent evil from entering the home. Furthermore, these lines are associated with the eternal cycle of life, fertility, and death, as well as “continuity, totality, and eternity.” Also, it’s said that the dots in kolam represent men, and the lines women, because women weaves their lives around men.
Since one crosses a kolam entering from the outside world into home, it is said to bridge these two worlds (the public and the private), and also the human to the divine. There are also different types of kolam for different occasions (nalvaravu kolams for welcoming guests, thottil kolams for the naming ceremony for a baby, etc.). The kolam also signifies the well-being of a home; if someone has recently passed, there will be no kolam in the entryway.
However, nowadays, kolams have become more of a decorative ritual rather than a religious or spiritual one, especially in the urban context.
Where does kolam come from?
Once again, there’s a lot of conflicting data on the history of kolam, and on floor designs in general. One source says that it dates back to the Mahabharata (from 800-900 BCE), in which gopis (milkmaids) would draw kolams to distract themselves of the pain when Krishna was away. Others cite the Kama Sutra (compiled sometime between 200 BCE and 200 CE) and how kolam was one of the 64 arts to be mastered by women. Specifically to kolam, a researcher on this topic, Dr. Gift Siromoney, says the earliest references appear in Madurai Meenakshiammai Kuram in the 16th century in Tamil literature. Others talk about its appearance in the Chitra Lakshana, India’s first treatise on painting.
Aside from clues in literary texts, the retired Professor Venkataraman of art history (he’s adorable!) from Madurai Kamaraj University says that kolams originated from people who lived by the sea and saw these designs in constellations and the general pattern of stars. He notes that people in the Indus Valley civilization were familiar with kolams.
So basically, who knows.
Kolam, mathematics, and science
Kolam has recently garnered interest as being applicable to mathematics as well as computer science. Marcia Ascher calls Kolam an “ethnomathematical” activity (ethnomathematics looks at the mathematical accomplishments of various, usually nonwestern, cultural groups). There are online math units using kolams to examine symmetry as well as aiding in the of teaching geometry, graphing, and algebra.
No, in fact, I don’t know anything about math.
I wrote about Gift Siromoney before, and him and his colleagues have explored the mathematical quality of kolams and written computer programs to produce various families of kolam. Kolam families have common geometric characteristics that can be derived from each other. Mathematicians have also looked into the links between kolam and high-level concepts such as fractals and knot theory, and computer scientists have also come to appreciate their algorithmic nature.
As I mentioned before, there are many traditions which eventually become absorbed into the culture and are passed down without necessarily communicating their significance. It’s a fun thing to try and dig up and understand them, though.
The truth is, I’m still an outsider to Bangalore and India, so I don’t know how relevant this is (to today’s reality, to certain age or social groups, etc.). I’m just writing from my observations and some research. If anyone can enlighten me further on the realities of beauty, please, let’s have a conversation.
…
Cast your eyes upwards in Bangalore and gazing back at you, larger than life, is Aishwarya Rai’s milky-white countenance inviting you to buy L’Oreal Crème. Drive another block, there’s Kareena Kapoor’s fair complexion ornamented with Malabar gold and diamonds. A pale-skinned Caucasian beauty modeling the new Levi’s. It’s as if these serene, seductive billboard faces high above the city have attained some sort of heavenly status.
And unfortunately, this may not be too far from the truth. In India, it seems that whether it comes to hiring practices, matrimonial prospects, or the entertainment industry, a preference for fair skin prevails. Scanning the matrimonial ads in The Hindu, skin color is described amongst other details such as family background, academic degree, and horoscope. Looking at the first hundred ads, about one-third either sought a fair bride, or self-identified as fair, reflecting its importance in the marriage market.
Bollywood also has a serious lack of darker-skinned actresses. Nandita Das, the current spokeswoman of the Dark is Beautiful campaign (launched originally by Women of Worth in 2009), reveals that directors suggest that makeup artists lighten her skin tone if her role is an educated, middle- or upper-class woman, reflecting the bias against those with darker complexions. She says that even darker-skinned actresses will eventually alter their skin tone to look lighter as they spend more time in the industry.
“Dark and dusky” Nandita Das
India’s fashion industry is seeing a growing number of Caucasian models from Eastern Europe. In addition to being a reflection of a globalizing economy, this also reveals the preference for fair skin perpetuated by a globalizing media presence, in which western features and fairness are linked with the ability to attain “the good life” in terms of beauty and affluence. I’ve seen brands such as Woodland, People, Reliance Trends, and Megamart in Bangalore all featuring Caucasian models on their billboards.
Indian editions of international fashion magazines also feature Caucasian women in Indian-style clothing. The fashion features editor of Vogue India admits:
When we put the white model in Indian clothes, it is a cultural exchange. It shows India’s economic self-confidence […] Of course, it also caters to the general feeling that ‘fair’ and ‘beautiful’ go together. For a rickshaw-puller who earns $2 a day, seeing a fair-skinned woman is an escape, a fantasy.
Preference for paleness across Asia
The preference for fair skin is not limited to India, but exists as part of a trend that appears across the continent of Asia. A 2004 study by Synovate revealed that 38% of women in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan used skin whitening products. In India, the fairness cream market has surpassed $400 million a year, and people spend more on skin lightening products than on Coca-Cola and tea. In Asia, people spend about $18 billion a year to appear lighter. And with the introduction of products such as Fair and Handsome, the target audience is no longer just women.
Now, take a look at this advertisement for Unilever’s Fair and Lovely:
Every Fair and Lovely ad features a segment where a despondent, darker-skinned woman is transformed into a beaming, pale-skinned version of herself. Fair and Lovely sells the procurement of social capital (via fairer skin) through the use of its product.
Skin whitening, however, can be dangerous. There are many creams that are not regulated by any government entity, and these products can include dangerous chemicals such as mercury, hydroquinone, and/or corticosteroids. In 2002, for example, two whitener creams in Hong Kong contained mercury levels that were between 9,000 and 65,000 times above the permissible dose, causing a toxic outbreak that affected over 1,000 people. However, there seems be no indication that these creams will lose their popularity any time soon.
The fairness fixation and colorism
So why this fixation? Colorism is an important factor to consider. It is discrimination that occurs within a population of people of color, in which people who are darker-skinned are considered inferior in various ways. Colorism, among other “-isms,” is a systemic issue, spanning across economic, political, and cultural systems. Ruby Hamad explains it well:
Colourism is oppression within oppression within oppression. This internalisation of white as the beauty ideal, as the most intelligent and desirable form of humanity, has led to communities (which many outsiders would presume are united), facing their own battles with discrimination and alienation in a bid to access the few privileges white society is willing to grant them.
Dr. Radhika Parameswaran, from the Cultural and India studies program at Indiana University, explains that for girls and women, colorism manifests itself in a multitude of ways in everyday life: being teased at school for their complexion, difficulty finding an office job or a partner, causing them to feel deficient and marginalized.
Looking back: Origins of the preference for paleness
Although we may look at the fairness phenomenon in the current day through the lens of colorism, it doesn’t quite explain how this trend began. As I tried to gain a clearer understanding of the origins of why pale skin was desired, I found various theories that at times competed or curiously intersected as to why the preference exists in Asia.
In some countries, such as China and Japan, it may have stemmed from their agriculture-based economies, in which pale skin meant that a person belonged to an aristocratic class and did not have to labor in the fields. There is even an old saying that states: “A fair complexion hides seven flaws.”
Among the articles I read concerning the preference for fairness in India, The Atlantic made the claim that, “While racism runs deep in India’s history, its roots intertwined with caste and colonialism, in today’s India, it finds expression in consumer behavior and corporate advertising.”
While I do agree that colorism may be propagated in the present day by the media and other sociocultural institutions, I found it problematic that the majority of articles simply referred to the caste system as the origin of colorism. I didn’t have enough of an understanding of the caste system, so I decided to investigate, and I was surprised by what I found…
Complex relations: Caste, colonialism, and color
Looking into the relationship between these three topics, I was astounded by the amount of misinformation and conflicting data that I found from so-called reputable sources. An article by Justice Markandey Katju of the Supreme Court of India touted the “racial origins” of the caste system by referring to the Hindu term for social classes, varna vyayastha, and how varna in the initial Sanskrit meant color. He also employed the Aryan invasion theory as a contributing factor to the dominance of white skin: that lighter-skinned Aryan invaders from the northwest conquered the darker-skinned native Dravidians inhabiting India.
Unfortunately, it seems like explanations like these are an oversimplification. For example, varna does not merely mean color. The root of the word is derived from the Sanskrit vr, meaning “to cover, to envelop,” and the full meaning includes “outward appearance, exterior, form, figure, shape, and color” (thank you Wiki). Furthermore, the Encyclopedia Britannica’s page on race ideologies also asserts that the caste system was not based primarily on color or a concept of race, which is something that is also backed by Murali Balaji, Director of Education and Curriculum Reform for the Hindu American Foundation, who cites that there is absolutely no archaeological or scientific evidence that any such Aryan invaders came to conquer darker-skinned indigenous groups and put a “colorist” or racist system into place.
Therefore, it does not make sense to equate or correlate caste with color, and use them as a simple base for explaining present-day social discrimination. Even looking at a single family unit, there exists a spectrum of hues, making a caste system based on skin tones hard to imagine. However, although color was not inherent in the caste system, it is possible that similar to Japan and China, those with higher status and not involved in manual labor could avoid darkening their natural skin tones by staying out of the sun.
I do believe though, that the long history of colonialism (especially by the British) did significantly contribute to an intertwining of color and status. Colonial conquerors tend to favor those who are similar to themselves, i.e. those with fairer complexions, and would hire them more readily and perhaps even include them in circles of power, therefore linking fairness to the possibilities of affluence, influence, and wealth.
Of course, there are many more subtleties in relation to this topic, and I know this is just the tip of the iceberg, but I felt it was important to understand the origins of the phenomenon of skin whitening beyond the plain legacy of “caste and colonialism.” Although Nandita Das says: “I don’t believe we have to keep going back into history […] We’re not just a product of our traditions: we’re also part of the globalized world. Today, the fact that such discrimination continues to exist is a function of consumerism. The market is waiting to cash in on people’s hidden aspirations,” I did feel the need to go back in time and attempt to disentangle some of the reasons why this fixation developed. Sometimes, it’s important to look back, at least briefly, to understand how to move forward.
Finding Bangalore 