This US born woman with vitiligo is reclaiming her Indian connection by way of blogging

Komal Patel is a young woman with vitiligo, working and living in US with her family and extremely proud of her Indian heritage. Due to her fully de-pigmented skin, she finds it hard to convince her fellow Indians sometimes that she is one of them. But, unfazed by those occasional frustrating experiences, she proudly flaunts her Indianness as comfortably as her ‘super white’ vitiligo skin.

For other Indians, I am 100% white. Actually, I am 100% Indian; culturally, socially and spiritually.

At day time, Komal is a business analyst with a leading finance company and by night, she is a blogger. In a bid to reconnect to her cultural heritage, she started the food and lifestyle blog ‘Sweet and Masala’ which has become quite popular among foodies and lifestyle enthusiasts who enjoys her wide range of articles covering food, fashion, beauty, health, travel and what not.

India is a land of colors, bold flavors and spices, so she adds rich flavors of India to the popular dishes of other world cuisines. Also, she uses Indian spices such as turmeric, ginger, cinnamon and ground pepper to create natural beauty hacks and treatments. For fashion, she loves to mix up Indian styles and dresses such as kurtis, jewelry, beaded bracelets, and lots of color in her everyday style.

She got vitiligo at a very young age

Komal and her family noticed vitiligo first when she was just six years old. One night Komal’s mom was giving her a night-time shower and she noticed some unusual white spots on her right leg. She didn’t pay much attention to it back then only to be all worried later when those small spots turned into big white patches and rapidly expanded to other parts of her body. On a visit to the doctor, she was diagnosed with vitiligo. She was a kid and was too young to understand the situation that she was stuck in.

The hard part was that there was little to no awareness about Vitiligo back then (almost 26 years back) and people often referred to it as the ‘Michael Jackson Disease’. Due to lack of information, people would assume that she tried bleaching her skin to look fairer and would make fun of her patchy skin tone and make insensitive comments.

Fortunately, her school life was quite easy and she didn’t face bullying or name calling in school at least.

By the time she turned 24, she was all white, thanks to 100% skin de-pigmentation. Living in US with a super-white skin, now she is not stared on because her skin is not patchy anymore.

However, her Indian identity got diluted.

She was often misunderstood as a native US citizen there. So, whenever people would see her name, they would ask her if she was really an Indian or was just making it up.

The non-Indians were able to look past her fair skin color and would believe her when told.

But she would have some really tough time proving to the other Indians that she was also cut from the same cloth. It was really frustrating that her ‘own’ people considered her an outcast owing to her extra white skin.

She shared one such frustrating event. Once she and her parents were visiting India and they went to the Taj Mahal. They bought three NRI (Non-resident Indian) tickets and as they were stepping in through the gate of the Taj Mahal, the ticket collector stopped them, saying that Komal needs to buy a foreigner ticket. They argued that she is an Indian and showed her IDs.

She tried her best to convince him that she is very much an Indian, but soon realized that no matter what she speaks or do, he is not going to believe her.

It was a distasteful incident and a harsh eye-opener to her.

She had faced such resentful incidents in the past as well, and after every such episode, she would look for ways to become ‘more’ Indian- learning to speak native Indian languages more efficiently, learning to cook Indian dishes and learning and upholding the Indian traditions and cultural norms.

But, after this particular experience, she decided not to make any more efforts to prove her Indian identity to others.

She was finally ready to break free from the shackles of fitting in as she geared up to standing up for her true self.

I am a Gujarati American and I love to stay connected to my Indian roots, heritage and culture. I don’t need validation from others to prove my identity.

Her journey of emancipation

Instead of getting approval from others, she started to get more familiar with Indian culture and heritage by learning about Indian cooking, fashion styles, beauty tips, home remedies and travel destinations. That’s how the blog ‘sweet and masala’ came into existence.

For her, this blog is a way to reclaim and celebrate her bicultural identity.

This blog is for everyone, but people with multiple cultural identities (Indian as well as Non-Indian, just like Komal), will find it more special.

Sometimes people would ask if it’s too hectic to manage such a comprehensive blog along with a full time job. She claims to be a foodie and fashion is something loved by every woman. So, this blog is not a work for her but a stress buster. It allows her to stay connected to her Indian roots. With this blog, she has given a concrete structure to her love for Indian cuisine and customs.

‘Stressed’ becomes ‘Desserts’ when spelled backwards. We, the foodies, always make ways for thinking about food all the time.

Along with this blog, she is quite active on Instagram with more than 38k followers, sharing all the happenings and interesting life events.

The family, friends and followers are her biggest support system

Komal got married to her boyfriend, Austin in December 2019 in a big fat Gujarati wedding ceremony and blessed with a baby boy in October 2020.

 

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Being a busy mother these days, she is still being able to continue with her amazing work as a digital content creator and inspire more and more people through her tale. She credits the love and support from her fiancé family and followers for it.

I am proud of my identity as a woman, not brown, not black, not white, not American, not Indian…to be just a woman is enough who is confident in her own self and enjoying her different roles as a wife, mother, daughter and friend.

She is a foodie by heart; look for good food in every situation

For Komal, food is a vessel that determines everything about one’s life and living. There is no sphere of her life where food doesn’t have a vital role to play. It is correlated with how one lives, how one looks and feels about their body.

Her love for Indian food started long back when she was a child. She shared that one summer, her mom sent her to her granny’s house and that is when she learned to cook a full course Indian meal. Growing up as an Indian girl, learning multiple house chores was a part of her schedule. She didn’t enjoy it much initially, but she grew a taste for it over time.

Komal as a vitiligo acceptance advocate

Komal is extremely glad that the world is getting more and more accepting of people with vitiligo these days. Vitiligo awareness in the society is a continuous process and a lot is yet to be done, still, things have improved a lot in the last decade thanks to the growing influence of social media and the internet.

Unlike before, now not everybody laughs at those who have Vitiligo and not all of us ask them uncomfortable questions about their skin. Beautiful and talented models like Winnie Harlow and Amy Deanna are getting recognized for their talents, becoming the face of numerous big fashion brands and magazines. It’s so encouraging that the society is realizing that vitiligo is just a cosmetic skin condition and not a defining characteristic.

In her blog, she has a whole section dedicated to vitiligo, known as ‘Vitiligo diaries’ where she shares her life experiences as well as her point of view about various vitiligo related topics.

Vitiligo has made me a stronger person with a ‘thick’ skin as I have had enough of stares, comments and unsolicited advices in the early years of my life before getting fully de-pigmented. Even now, sometimes, I do have to face these things but I just don’t care.