Avishkar and several other mutineers sent in a story tip from Reuters about a rather unusual wedding complication, so I realized I better post it ASAP, lest I see it in my inbox yet yanother time. 😉
When it came to our color-obsessed culture, I thought it was the girl’s complexion which mattered. I guess turnabout is fair play. Sort of.
Turned down for marriage due to his dark complexion, an Indian man staged a hunger strike outside his would be bride’s house for two days before she finally relented, an official said Saturday.
Didn’t he know they make fairness creams for the new, metrosexual, dark brown man?
Saral Prasad, the 23-year-old groom in eastern Bihar state, said he would not budge from the girl’s village home after she refused to marry him earlier this week in an arranged marriage because he was too dark.
Rajani, 19, changed her mind after two days and the couple got married, Arun Kumar Mishra, a village council official said.
“We were all taken by surprise but Rajani was finally moved by the gesture of the young man and married him,” Mishra said.
Rajani was not quoted as saying, “I just want everyone to shut up and go away already, for Pinter’s sakeâ€.
Most Indian women, especially those in rural areas, often have no choice in matters of marriage, and are coerced into it by relatives and parents.
Yes, of course..we Indian women have no choice with regards to anything and are coerced in to everything we do. Just this past Saturday, at the meetup, I was coerced in to drinking my Madras coffee later than I wanted to, because our poor waiter was so overwhelmed with 26 people ordering at once, he forget that I asked for it. Thrice. Obviously his being an Indian male was why he oppressed me by not sating my caffeine fix. :p And yes, yes…the meetup write-up…it is coming.
in the end, woman got da soft heart. see, she marry him inspite.
…and then changed her mind! Poor guy.
No, I think she did marry him post-strike. At least that’s how I read it.
Noting down in my PDA Hunger strike for two days can possibly get you a date.
DATE? Bride!
My limited experience in rural India indicates that this is not an untrue statement.
Yeah, that would be in Bihar. Not where I live.
Limited experience != Conclusions
Am I misunderstanding this?
Oh, yes I did misunderstand. My bad 🙂
That was from one of your news tab submissions, so obviously the statement inspired a gag reflex in a few of us.
I must have brown on the brain: when I read “from Reuters”, what I saw was “from Rutgers” (maybe thinking of the proximity of Oak Tree Rd. in Edison?) and I imagined this guy camped out outside the apartment of some girl on College Avenue.
Time to guzzle more chai….
I love stories like these and the commentary that goes with them. =) Anna you are the reason I love Sepia Mutiny.
This is the not the first “Oddly Enough” I see coming out of India. Do these people simply scour the entire subcontinent looking for these kind of outlying cases, then draw conclusions vis a vis: “Most Indian women are forced!”
I’m not sure the intended statement, by having such a category, is it, “Oh look how odd these Indian people are?” or “Look how odd this is for India?”
My limited experience in rural India indicates that this is not an untrue statement.
Well, the sentence in the report uses the phrase “most”, which is what I take exception to. I don’t doubt some women are coerced, but my own (admittedly anecdotal) observations suggest that most are not coerced, i.e. they do have the ability to turn down an unsuitable prospective groom…although they may not have the freedom to marry someone of their own choosing. It’s all a question of degrees, I guess.
Perhaps it would help if we used a chart (ie. http://www.fxsupply.com/kryolan_catalog/images_charts/chart10.jpg) to help our sketchy desi class system.
In this convenient schema, I would list myself somewhere between ivory and DF. Aishwarya would be T/white and Johnny Lever would of course be RDS7. I think we need to hammer out what ‘wheatish’ actually means. Most desi girls I know remind me very little of Quizno’s. Except that one auntie who always smelled like toasted naan.
“Most Indian women, especially those in rural areas, …………” what is it? every time a brown chick sees a statement like that she has to apply it to herself and go off on it – accept it ladies you are SO NOT “most Indian women…..” let me count the ways – highly educated, middle to upper-class, urban, ………
Don’t Want No Dark, Dark Man…
Ahahaha. That song is going to be in my head all afternoon. Hopefully there will be a story coming up about someone they call Mr. Personality.
It is so unfortunate that we Indians pay so much attention to the fairness factor of one’s skin. I for one I delighted when I get my summer tan (much much darker than my actual ‘fair’ complexion). It’s great because my tan evens out my skin tone & covers up those annoying dark circles under my eyes.
If only India would get off the obbession of fairness creams & took a look at North America where here people are obsessed with TANNING creams & lotions. I have so many white friends who would GIVE anything to have our complexion, who spend hours under the sun in the home of acheiving our dark tans yet emerge badly burned. The same friends who frequently visit those tanning salons in the hope of having a darker skin tone, but realizing how dangerous they are – Cancer causing machines is what they call them.
We Indian ARE SO LUCKY to have the dark enviable complexion we do, yet we are so obsessed with bleaching ourselves to conform to society’s version of the norm. The irony: we are so prejudiced against our own complexion one that so many white folk so desperately long for.
http://underthebermudasun.blogspot.com/2007/05/spf-yourself.html
I’ll accept it when the ignorant do; the second they stop accosting me with bullshit stories like this in an attempt to “widen their horizons” and learn more about my “foreign” culture, the very moment when they don’t use this story as a distorted lens with which to view me and every other Indian person, whether IBD or ABD, I promise you, I will accept your very true observation.
every time a brown chick sees a statement like that she has to apply it to herself and go off on it
Uh, was this directed at my comment…because I did not even attempt to apply the statement to myself. My point was that you can’t generalize, but apparently that didn’t stop you from generalizing anyway.
Really?!?! I had no idea. This just one more item on the list of reasons why human civilization is going to hell in a handcart. Fairness creams…good lord.
Come up with the meetup write-up woman!
Now you can say that you were coerced into doing that by an oppressive Indian male. You’re welcome! 😉
What an awkward way to start a marriage… Just imagine the couple having this conversation ten years from now:
Husband: Honey, remember that time I went on a hunger strike because you didn’t want to marry me for being too dark? Wife: LOL yeah.
I wanna see what the chick looks like..
the darker the berry the sweeter the juice.
“the darker the berry the sweeter the juice.”
Thank you, color blind. I guess not all women want a man who’s “tall, dark and handsome.”
Where did you get that, “the darker the berry the sweeter the juice” from ?
I can’t answere the where but I think it’s true. I just had dark as hell cherries/strawberries and they were so sweet. Delicious.
23, I’m not sure this is such an awkward way to start. At least they’ll have something to talk about on their wedding night.
Rajani: Are you still hungry? Would you like something to eat? (laughter from flower-bed) Saral: See, with the lights out we’re all the same colour (snuggle, snuggle in flower-bed)
TUPAC! Have we already forgotten tha fallen? sniffle
My bad. Tuesdays are my Mondays. How could I have forgotten Tupac??
Tupac was OK when I was 16.. Kind of lame now..
Okay fine, he rapped “the BLACKER the berry” in “Keep ya head up”, but same difference:
23 – ya, it’s great how there future conversations will be on AIM
their
Re: #27 Where did you get that, “the darker the berry the sweeter the juice” from ?
Its an old African-america folk saying. Like us, they too have an unjust/ironic issue with skin color within their own community as well.
I think we should come up with an equivalent saying, but more Desi specific….any takers? I’ll start:
“The darker the nimbu achar, the spicer the flava” Discuss amongst yourselves.
the darker the mangoes the sweeter the juice
And I’m embarassed to admit that I have tupac lyrics stuck in my head even years and years after I stopped listening to him..
in case anybody had any questions as to why men might need a fairness cream, emami has created this fabulous chart. best reason : ‘womens are attracted’!
not that i agree with these reasons : personally, i do like the darker skin on men. unfortunately, sometimes it operates like alcohol:beer goggles…
Some say the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice
I’m shocked RIM hasn’t worked this into some sort of commercial slogan for the Blackberry yet…
Well, I didn’t think it possible to like Tupac more than I already do, but your unnecessary put-down just did the trick. Tell us, what is NOT lame, oh arbiter of cool hip-hop?
No offence to Tupac, but the saying predates him considerably. Its from the Deep Old South [citiation needed].
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since its a reuters article (and more so because its on india), such trashy journalism is to be expected.
The greatest rap song/video ever created is Big Pimpin by Jay Z..
I started singing this at work… Thanks Sepia 🙂
Kala Shah Kala Kala Shah Kala mera kala hai dil dar Gorean no dafa karo Mein aap sone di taar Gorean no dafa karo
…and suddenly everything you type makes perfect sense. Vaya con Dios, if you don’t know the genius which Guru, KRS-one, Slick Rick, Tribe et al comprise. Even Dre had a greater impact on hip-hop than Jay-Z. Shit, you should’ve even said Biggie. Herb.
Care to clarify?
Gudia: brua to that. I for one was rejected by an Amereekan Born Chaka Desi, who’s mama said I was too dark. Now, he’s getting his forst divorce after marrying the fair & lovely nurse Mama S. found him. I have to wonder, will I still be too dark since I am still single 5 years later?
Please stop commenting on hiphop.. I beg you
Is this man some kind of nut? In his place I would have used some explicit language, thrown a copy of The Bluest Eye in her general direction and then gone cheerily in search of greener pastures. The cynic in me speculates that once she realized the extent of his loony devotion, she decided that having such a malleable husband outweighed the “disadvantage” of his colour!
Maybe it’s me but I get a whiff of pro-female bias in this thread. Had the gender roles been reversed, I can only imagine the keyboard beatdown the man would have taken.
TUPAC! Have we already forgotten tha fallen? sniffle
I think the phrase was around in the West Indies from way back when.