Renowned fashion designer and actress Masaba Gupta is preparing to welcome her first child. In a conversation with Faye D’Souza, she discussed the unwelcome advice she has been receiving throughout her pregnancy.Masaba said, “It happened to me just yesterday that somebody who came up to me for some pre-natal something telling me, ‘You must eat a rasgulla every day’ because your kid has to turn out lighter than you. And then, 15 days before that, I was getting another pre-natal massage, because that’s what I do, and she (her masseuse) said to me, ‘Aap na doodh liya karo (you must consume milk). Saawla nahi hona chahiye, nahi honi chahiye, whatever (your child must not turn out dusky).’ It was said with so much innocence. You have no choice – what can I do? Punch my masseuse? No.”She added, “You raise a child that hopefully has the resilience to power through it. That’s all you do. There’s no other way because it’s not going to change. It’s going to be spoken of in hush tones because certain things now aren’t politically correct. But it’ll be spoken of. The number of times people think calling someone ‘kaali’ (dark) is a way of putting them down, I find that so absurd.
