Wanted!

Never are you made so aware of the way you look and your skin colour until the day you read the matrimonial columns. Colours of skin: to most people there are just 2 types – fair and dark. How dark or how fair is not a matter of consideration.

Why is it that most matrimonial advertisements read out uniformly as, ‘wanted: fair / very fair, tall, slim, very beautiful, professionally qualified, modern with traditional values, willing to work, to be an ideal daughter…’ phew every man / man’s family wants a world beauty contest winner, beauty with brains! Hey not just the men, even the ‘wanted groom’ columns read this way.

No wonder Fair & Lovely & Fair & Handsome has been making a killing in this market. The superiority of the gora chamdi has been itched so deeply in our minds that it will take a complete overhaul to overcome such thoughts to even remotely consider brown as a skin colour.

Now just imagine a place where every second person you came across on the street was a Jessica Alba, Sharon Stone, Aishwarya Rai, Julia Roberts, Kate Winslet, Sushmita Sen…Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Richard Gere…? What a wonderland! But, wouldn’t that make the world a rather uninteresting place? Oh no! Then maybe people would be so sick of it that the so called average beauties would be kept at a pedestal.

A lot of men wage for professionally qualified women, many frown at the prospect of her wanting to work after marriage. Now which girl would want to give up all that she has studied and whished for, just like that. Another very strange wish is for the girl to be traditional yet modern…now that is a very, very difficult combination, more like chalk and cheese! This maybe a reflection of the anomalies between the boy and his parents. Hey make a choice! Things would be rather simple if you know where you stand.

For every parent, his or her child is the most beautiful / handsome person in the whole world. It is they who receive blow after blow to their self confidence and beliefs every time they make an enquiry. We have classes for every damn thing under the sun…it is high time people are trained the communication etiquettes.

Isn’t it a well known fact that beauty is temporary? Why then are such brief highs always valued the most? Isn’t the Dravidian race supposed to possess a darker skin tone? What is so shameful about it then? Isn’t it better to choose a person for his / her zest to achieve, being smart to make the right decisions for progress, his / her compassion, his / her honest simplicity rather than settle for a dashing personality and live in constant fear about you being able to match up to him / her?