My aunt Sara always made me carry an umbrella when we stepped out of the house.
I was forbidden from playing in the sun. I looked longingly as my friends learnt swimming during summer holidays. “Are you crazy? Do you know how tanned you will get?”
I wished to run, without the sunscreen, without these full sleeved clothes and the damn umbrella. So what if I was dusky, did that make me any less beautiful? I never got the point of trying to prevent my skin from getting tanned. I had stopped enjoying my life because I had to care for skin all the time.
I then moved to a different country and to my utter surprise they loved my tan. They adored my natural brown skin. I dint have to lay in the sun for hours to get a tan. The first thing I did was break that damn umbrella and throw it off.
(155 words)
Linking up with Priceless Joy who hosts a weekly flash fiction challenge for aspiring writers.
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Published by Akshata Ram
Chartered Accountant, Story Teller, Dreamer, Voracious Reader, Blogger, Mommy to a little munchkin, Shopaholic, Day Dreamer.Passionate about my career in the corporate world and aspire to break the glass ceiling, at the same time nurture my passion for writing. My niche area is short stories, I also write on parenting, sexism, life's experiences, micro blogs and flash fiction. I have won the best Parenting blog post at mycity4kids.com the largest parenting website in India, 4 times and several of my posts have been published in the #MostPopular category on this site garnering millions of views. I also write on Bonobology, Rivo Kids, Women's Web and Youth Ki Awaaz. My blog has been chosen as the Top Indian Blogs for the years 2018-2019,2020 by TopIndianBlogs website and found a place in the prestigious Top 22 Indian Literary Blogs in 2020 @TopIndianBlogs.
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www.akswrites.com 
Although she may have had a point about the dangers of overexposure to the sun, plenty of sunscreen for a healthy looking tan 🙂
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lol
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LOL! Glad she was able to get rid of the umbrella! Sun exposure makes your skin wrinkle as you get older. Maybe your aunt was watching out for you to have youthful skin and no skin cancer! Great story!
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Thx Joy there is lot of prejudice in India against dark skin that’s what I was trying to capture here!
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Oh, I see. Sorry, I didn’t know that. Thank you for explaining it to me.
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Awesome one Aks- I think only and Indian girl can relate very well to this one 😉 went through something similar in my childhood too
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True me too!
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We and our biases. Sigh.
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Sad indeed
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Glad that she’s finally free!
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Great use of the prompt, so pleased that for her at least the umbrella is redundant
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Yes can’t be happier!
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Instead of breaking the umbrella, she should have gifted it back to Aunti
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