In our society, the word kali often slips out as a snide or insult, a reminder of how deeply colourism runs through our culture. With ‘KALI’, the title track of her latest eponymous album, Ditty pushes back against that attitude — one that has long dictated narrow standards of beauty while denying countless women the right to see their own skin as beautiful.
Growing up in Delhi in a Rajasthani family, Ditty recalls being called kali “at home, in school, and everywhere,” and enduring a relentless stream of remarks about skin colour. “I grew up with my grandma, who was fair-skinned and unhappy to have a girl in the house,” she says, adding that her complexion was a constant topic of conversation: from worries over whether she should play outside in the sun to anxious speculations of “how will she find a man?” The track becomes an intimate exploration of those memories, opening with the stinging refrain: “Kaash meri daadi yeh kehti, khoobsurat hai tu, meri jaan” (I wish my grandmother would say, you are beautiful, my love).
These scars she bares in an aching chorus, “Hoon Main Kali” (Yes, I am Kali). The track plays with the layered meanings of kali — both “black-skinned” and Kali, the goddess of death and destruction in Hindu mythology to say dark-skinned is beautiful. “I wanted to address the everyday discrimination against dark skin and show how the same word can mean goddess, and simultaneously be used as an insult,” says the Berlin-based musician.
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