Goray rung ka zamana kaubi hoga na purana

I have met quite a few dark skinned girls who are comfortable in their own skin. Most of the darker of the fairer sex are crazed about fair complexion. The following is an excerpt from Nirad C Chaudhry's book about the preference given by prospective groom's parents to fair girls.

"At the time of the inspection of the girls for marriage their claim to fair complexion is scrutinized very rigorously. In west Bengal, until recently it was not uncommon to rub apparently fair-looking girls with a wet towel to find out whether their complexion was natural or made up. On account of this insistence on fair complexion, the fathers of marriageable dark girls sometimes substituted a fairer sister at the time of the inspection, with dire results for the dark girl after marriage." an excerpt from The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian.

I remember a female colleague of mine from express news, who despite being exceptionally fair, would keep on trying various creams, often without prescription, to whiten her complexion. She always sported pimples on her face, courtesy of her do-it-yourself (DIY) dermatology experiments. 

First day in Express 24/7

It was the first day of training in Express 24/7. The management had hired a diverse group of employees to undergo training for the upcomming english channel. Few people were from english newspapers and most crowd was non-media people. The non-media people were very excited. They were thrilled to think about working in a news channel and many had broken this news to their friends and relatives. They had told them that it’s a very responsible job requiring a lot of experience and good english. They were justified to be excited as all of them were hired on good salaries and their previous qualifications were ignored.

Almost all of them were jobless after completing their graduation degrees when some friend of them told them about the new channel looking for diverse talents.


Girls and boys in this hip crowd were looking at their best. Boys had double-shaved to make prominent their facial hair their jeans barely covering their pubics or buttocks, flipping their latest cell phones and talking about their last holiday abroad.


Girls were no less flamboyant. They had worn makeup and jeans regardless of the size and shape of their butts. Most of them were trying to look normal in their ill-fitting jeans, talking non-stop about all the job ‘offers’ they had had before joing express news. Many were heard talking that they joined the media as they wanted to bring a revolution in Pakistan with the skills they believed they had.

Episode One