Kaali, at Scroll

Navarathri week. Nine nights for the goddess in all her forms, and on the seventh she is Kalaratri, dark and fierce, the one we also call Kali.

Scroll has run my essay about the other kaali today. The one said over breakfast with a palm against a child’s cheek. The one Paati folded into a compliment, the aunties turned into a greeting, and the kadalai maavu face pack was supposed to wash away.

And the one I caught in my own head this summer, about my own child.

Read it at Scroll.

The word is also in Why Is My Skin Brown?, the novel the essay is about. Sarayu is twelve, she moves from Pennsylvania to Bengaluru, and her Nani Ma looks at her face and says the color has not improved since birth. Scroll ran a chapter from it in September, if you want to meet her first.

Happy Navarathri. May every dark girl at every golu this week hear only that she glows.

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