Malavika Mohanan shares tragic childhood incident about facing racism

Malavika Mohanan has become a household name all thanks to her superb portrayal of the lead character opposite Ishaan Khatter in ‘Beyond The Clouds’. The actress has been one who has championed the cause of racism and has always spoken up whenever need be about how being dark-skinned was never a deterrent to her dreams of becoming an actress. She shared a tragic incident on the same lines from her childhood where she had to face racism right in front of her eyes.

Malavika took to social media to share a post after the recent death of George Floyd which was said to be caused due to police brutality resulting from racism. Have a look at Malavika’s post here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CA7eYIygCoR/

Here is what Malavika wrote:

When I was 14 yrs old, one of my closest friends at that point told me that his mother never let him drink tea because she had this weird belief that drinking tea darkened ones’ skin complexion, and when he asked for tea once she told him(referring to me) “If you drink tea, you will become dark like her”. He was a fair maharashtrian boy and I was a wheat-ish skinned malayalee girl. The complexion dissimilarity we had had never even occurred to me up until that point. This left me perplexed because it was the first time somebody had made a comment like that with a mean undertone about my skin colour.

So much casual racism and colourism exists in our own society. Calling a dark skinned person ‘kala’ is something we see on an everyday basis. The discriminatory behaviour against south-Indians and North-East Indians is also appalling. Dark skinned Indians are jokingly referred to as ‘madrasis’ because for some strange reason these ignorant people think all South Indians are only dark skinned. North-East Indians are almost exclusively only called ‘chinki’, all black people are casually referred to as ‘negros’ and fair people are equated as beautiful and dark skinned people are equated as ugly.

While we speak about global racism, we must also become aware about what’s happening around us, in our homes, our friend circles and our society, and do our part in thwarting the obvious as well as the subtle racism and colourism that exists all around us, in our everyday lives.

What makes you beautiful is being a good and kind person, and not the colour of your skin. ✊?✊?✊?✊?✊?

Also Read: Ishaan Khatter blasts a troll who slammed him for supporting #BlackOutTuesday; says, “Don’t owe you any explanation”

Prateek Sur

Born a Movie Buff, working as a Film Critique and enjoying life as a Bollywood Reporter.

Email: editor@bollywoodbubble.com Phone: +91 8355910465