Dear White Girl

when you can be killed at birth for being born with a vagina

when you are harassed and treated like a lesser being for your gender

when you have to walk to school down streets where men outnumber you 10-1 with a constant fear of being molested/raped

when you get eve-teased, groped and cat-called almost every day

when you cannot complain about sexual harassment to your family because that just reaffirms their belief that girls must stay at home instead of going to college

when your aunts constantly draw attention to your dark skin and your frizzy hair, and tell your mother in falsely sympathetic tones that it’ll be hard to find a proposal for you

when the media constantly bombards you with with ads showing the fair girl getting the guy/job, sending you the message that your worth is tied in to your skin color, that you will never be good enough

when the people who systematically oppressed and killed your ancestors now treat your gods like relics of a people who no longer exist

when the people who once treated your religion as something barbaric and primitive now appropriate the gods you revere and worship to get them tattooed on their asses

when you have a father who raises you to speak English and not your native language so that you will not have to suffer the same discrimination that he did for not being able to speak English

when your mother is automatically labelled traditional and backwards for going to a supermarket in a foreign country wearing a sari

when you are killed in a foreign country and your death is labelled as an accident because “that psycho thought she was probably a Muslim ‘cause of her scarf” as if it’s somehow okay to kill a Muslim

when you have to forgo your own culture to fit in because otherwise you’re “papadom” or “the curry girl”

when you have to eat and sleep in a separate room and not touch anything when you’re on your period because you’re considered ‘impure’

when people make fun of your “weird” name

when the media either hypersexualizes you as an exotic sex goddess or portrays you as a desexualized, submissive person with no say in relationships

when you have a grandmother who still has nightmares about hiding down a well for days when the British raided her village and raped the women

and relatives who are still haunted by the ghosts of colonialism, war and communal violence

when you have taken all the shit and ugliness that comes with being a girl of Indian skin and Indian blood

when you have taken all that is unglamorous about our lives

then you can share the glamorous

then you can celebrate Holi

then you can rock the Bollywood ‘princess’ look at your Halloween parties

then you can wear a fucking bindi.