Rosie’s marriage did not last long. But many months after she returned to her parents’ cottage on a south Indian tea estate, her husband’s voice rattled around her head like a vengeful earworm, berating her for her dark skin and overall worthlessness. One day, another voice spoke up. It was gravelly and hoarse, like a grandma who had chain-smoked cheroots for half a century. ‘There is a goddess within you,’ it rasped. ‘She can make you fairer and prettier. Listen to her instructions.’ That is how Rosie arrived at the beauty regimen she followed every day for the next 10 years: collecting excrement at dawn, and carefully smoothing it across her limbs and face.
The regimen caused her father, a widower, to eject her from his home. Rosie eventually found herself in a shelter on the outskirts of the city Chennai. Here, a kind young man informed her that she suffered from schizophrenia, and that the old lady didn’t exist. Rosie listened to what he said, but she was not sure she believed him. After all, the old lady said only what Rosie had been hearing all her life, from her mother, her friends, her husband, and her television set. They all spoke in one voice, telling her that dark skin was unlovable, that fairness was synonymous with femininity, and that she should whiten her skin at any cost.
[For more of this story, written by Shruti Ravindran, go to http://aeon.co/magazine/psycho...n-illness-or-a-cure/]
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