A journey from doubt to self-acceptance, and the realization that beauty was never skin-deep. No One Ever Told Me I Was Beautiful—and, unfortunately, I believed them. For as long as I can remember, I chased beauty without knowing what it truly looked like. From the time I could understand the language as a child, I was hit with the most common “joke” in Indian households: "You’re not really our sibling—your parents picked you up from the trash, or outside a temple." Even as a kid, I wondered: If this were even remotely true, why is it funny? It was hurtful. And it came from those closest to me—my own siblings. The joke settled in my mind like a stone. I kept asking my brother why he said it. What proof did he have? Then came another blow: "Your complexion is darker than ours." He said it gently, like it was a fact. Maybe he didn’t know how it would eat away at my self-esteem. But that was my entry into the world of inferiority complexes. When I would get ready...