‘The Battle of Polly’s Blackness’ I’d labelled it in my teen years, little realizing how right Naani had been.

Even when we visited her in the hospital before her appendix operation, Naani reprimanded, ‘You should at least try and listen to a dying woman’s words—don’t wear that yellow, girl—makes you resemble a buffalo lost in a mustard field. It doesn’t do anything for your colouring.’

The nurses and one attending doctor looked at me pitifully, Ma whispered something about ‘letting it be’ and I had fervently—and guiltily—wished Naani’s operation would be fatal.

Then came the day the first boy came to see me. Two hours before the family’s scheduled arrival, Naani freaked out about the lights in the drawing room.

‘Arre someone pull those curtains and let some light in. And someone switch those tubelights on. I don’t want any yellow light in the drawing room, what happened to the new tubelights?’ Naani screamed.

When I remarked that she was taking unnecessary pains as no one notices lights, Naani ignored me till Banu, my oh-so-dainty and fair cousin explained that since I looked darker in yellow light, the new tubelights had been purchased to make me look ‘fair’.

‘Yellow light highlights yours shadows, no?’ Banu said.

But changing the lights didn’t help—the first refusal came promptly. Even though I’d been expecting it—after all, not everyone is going to say yes to an alliance—the refusal devastated my self-confidence.

It also gave full control of alliance-seeking into Naani’s hands. She took over and swore she’d get me married. The first thing Naani did was to put out a new matrimonial for me. She found someone very good with Photoshop.

‘Fair, beautiful, convent-educated, homely and comely Ahuja girl seeks alliance from etc.,’ read the matrimonial and to go with that huge white lie—Naani had my photographs ‘Photoshopped’ to make me look fair. She said it happened all the time.

There I was, posing, looking away demurely. How I hated that photograph, looking sixteen shades lighter than I actually was. The photograph worked, though, and the number of interested parties doubled.

Two more boys refused to marry me once they saw me face-to-face. For once, Naani didn’t need to spell out the reason—I knew it—the goods were not what had been advertised.

I was very nervous that third time, when after the initial letter exchanges and scoping out of common interests, Sid and his mother came down to see me.

I hadn’t wanted to go through the whole thing again. It was humiliating. The families looked really expectant before I came into the room—but once I walked in they tried to hide their obvious disappointment when they saw me.

I was doubly nervous that third time because unlike the other boys whose mothers had done the finding-out-about-the-girl, Sid had insisted on writing to me personally. I had liked him.