Me and my skin

An essay where I open up about my relationship with my skin

I never thought of my skin colour as a child, except when in my junior school, I was called a sudu layama (white boy in English, සුදු ලමයා in Sinhala).

You may now wonder, in Australia, where the majority is light-skinned, how I was identified as a whitefella in Sri Lanka as a youngster. That is the crazy bit. Skin colour is relative to the cultures and location.

My parents were light-skinned. My mother’s younger sister was addressed as Sudu Nona (white lady in English, සුදු නෝනා in Sinhala). My grandfather was fair for a Sri Lankan. In our family, we had diversity within the family. My kid brother was so dark that I had to tell others he was my brother. Some would not yet believe me.

We use the terms fair and dark in this day and age. But back in Sri Lanka, the local words are Sudu and Kalu (White and Black in English, සුදු and කලු in Sinhala). Lo, I was a whitefella, and my kid brother was a blackfella. Proudly so, both of us. But in progressive countries like Australia, classifying by colour is not done. It is racist and discriminatory.

When young, one takes your body and colour in your stride. I did not feel that I was different. It was my normal. I accepted my colour and the colours of others around me. I did not think of it at all.

But not some of the others, the blackfellas.

I'd get flushed and red when I played soccer at school. Everyone around me, seeing me reddened, laughed at my expense, pointing at me, to my sheer embarrassment. Nobody takes a mirror to the sports ground to see how one looked. So, I had never seen myself in my reddened state. They yelled at me, Rathu Lamaya (Red Boy in English and රතු ලමයා in Sinhala). I became the joke on the sports ground.

I had two skin pigmentations from birth in the back of my torso. There, my skin was even lighter in colour. I thought of them as an embarrassment. While bathing and swimming in the boarding school, I always wore a vest to cover the two patches. I hoped none of the boys saw them.

When I was a teenager, some kids in my neighbourhood pointed at me and called me a karapotta (cockroach, කැරපොත්තා in Sinhala). Karapotta was another term for a whitefella in Sri Lanka. How a name of a black-coloured insect was used for name-calling, a whitefella, was way beyond my understanding. I figured later that they meant that I looked like an albino cockroach. An albino among them, black cockroaches.

Some called me a lansiya (a term used to identify people of mixed Dutch and Sri Lankan origin). But I was from the majority race, Sinhalese, whatever race meant. What is race anyway?

This name-calling did not affect me. The callers did it in jest, in their youthful bluster.

When I was seventeen, at the age of young and free, I attended the then-only private university college in Sri Lanka. My exposure was to western culture, music, and fashion. I was following David Bowie, Santana, and Bay City Rollers. I had long hair and wore oversized spectacles. I wore colourful bell bottoms, jeans, t-shirts, and colourful singlets. My thin frame was obvious to many. I was drastically thin but tall. Think of 180 centimetres in a 45-kilogram frame. Nobody dressed like me in my village. I was bold enough in a backwater village immersed in the local culture and domestic fashion.

One jealous lad in my home village started name-calling me Naki Suddi (White woman, නාකි සුද්දි in Sinhala). A whitefella walking with oversized bell-bottoms in a colourful vest without caring for the world probably triggered that name-calling. Do you think I was upset? No, not at all. I knew he was jealous and did not have the confidence to be comfortable under his skin. So to cover his lack of courage, he called me a white woman. I ignored the punk.

None of these things baffled me. I had been taught not to think of what others thought of me. Their name-calling was for them. I was myself, unaffected by it all. Believe me; sometimes I found it amusing why they thought I was different.

My skin colour had its advantages, too, in retrospect. Just as I turned eighteen, I nailed my first-ever interview to secure my first job, a coveted one in Sri Lanka, mostly due to my English and confidence. I am sure my skin colour also played a part. Beauty played its role in unconscious bias, this time in my favour.

Back to present times, my four adult kids are also light in colour and identify themselves as Australians. Nobody guesses their origins as Sri Lankan. Seeing Sri Lankans generally as dark, they jokingly questioned me about my ethnic origins. When I turned sixty, they gifted me a DNA test kit from the National Geographic Society. When the results came from the US a few months later, it turned out that my ancestors had come to Sri Lanka from the part of Asia where present-day Iran and Afghanistan is. There you go, the secret of my skin is out. I am a living testimony to the Asian mass migrations centuries ago.

My skin colour has changed over time. I am now in my mid-sixties. Forty-five years in sunny Dubai and Australia have played a part in my permanent suntan.

Yet many Sri Lankan Australians do not recognise me as one of their own here in Australia. Sometimes, I had re-iterate my Sri Lankan family name to feel part of an occasional conversation with them. For them, the colour of my skin might be the blocker.

I have had my own unconscious biases too. A few years ago, I attended a community funeral for the brother of one of my classmates in Sydney. The attendees were Sri Lankan Australians in the hundreds. I had never seen so many dark people in one location. Sri Lankans are dark; I must admit that it dawned on me only on that day. Perhaps belatedly.

I must have been odd.

My skin evokes feelings of love, resilience and strength when I look at myself. My skin is a loving poster to myself.

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