Fair & Lovely?
We Indians, it seems, place a high value on fairness. Scan through a few matrimonial classified ads and you’ll see that a requirement that appears frequently, for a girl, is fairness. I’d thought that with our generation we would see this disappear but a recent dinner conversation reminded me that we still have a long way to go 
This goes out to all Indian ladies who continue to suffer the teasing and taunting of friends and family because they are dark complexioned.
In case you’re interested, links to a few articles/comments saying it so much better than I ever could. A Darker Side of Fair, Fair = Lovely, Bollywood delusions,
20″ X 24″ acrylic on canvas
Filed under: 2008, Ujwala | Tagged: 2008, Acrylic, Canvas, Dhaka, Painting, Ujwala
[...] : May 8, 2008 : you can see the finished piece here. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)YakubEvery day can’t be a SundayMonday Photo [...]
well the thght is definitely gud and appropriate but the work seems to be quite similar to one of the works done by raja ravi varma though the colours arent d same but the whole positioning and lady standing by door is very similar to the painting he did actually i had done a very detailed biographical study of raja ravi varma in my school days. just wanted to telll
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I like this :>
you’ve been doing some lovely work
hi priyanka. good to see you here. i havent seen the raja ravi varma painting but i guess this pose has been made often and by many
it appealed to me too. this particular one is based on a photograph. I must look up the painting you are referring to. love to get comments and feedback from friends. thank you.
Thanks Vivien
OMG u are a magician, if these are ur portraits then u have some skills thats for sure.
lol! Thank you Vineet.
Hey ujjwal,
Great work about something that needs to be a part of everyday conversation in Indian houses and Indian mainstream.
I am a student and working on a project related to the same theme. Please let me know if I can use you image on my website (under construction) and get a quote from you in it. I see it has a CC license.
Jyoti
Jyoti - i’m glad you like the piece. you are welcome to use the image as per the cc terms and i’ll send you an email about this shortly.
Ujwala, what you write is pretty true. As I have witnessed it this preference for white skin is very common in *all* Asian countries - not only in India! To my surprise I had to learn that this is not only some reminescent of the colonial era, but actually a phenomenon on its own which existed long before this time and is rooted deep in the culture of most of these countries. As far as I remember there are still quite a few Indians out there believng that the descendants of the Aryan lines are superior to those of South India. (After all even the castes where constructed according to this belief… ) . And I remember many vedic scriptures, too, that are quite partial to fair skin. The first one that comes to mind is usually this one where Shiva teases his wife, because her complexion is too dark …
PS: The winking smiley in my previous post was not intended. I closed the brackets after the … points and it appeared :(((
not to worry. I’ve added an extra space after the full stops and that fixed the problem.
I see that you’re well versed with our part of the world. I need to ask around for something from the pre-Aryan days to see if there are any clues. I hope that this need diminishes with succeeding generations.
l knw hw it feels to be teased 4 being dark cause l get it ma self frm ma family they are always going on and on bout hw dark lam and sumtimes l end lukin at dark and lovely and thinkin of buyin it
hi samantha, i’m sorry to hear that
tell them that it is NOT an important factor and you dont want to hear them talk about such comparisions anymore. and if you dont feel like it ask someone close to you to do it for you and on your behalf every time the subject comes up and do that till it stops coming up and stops being discussed!