When I was small, my dad would make me yellow potatoes. And when I was finished, my plate would be streaked with beautiful stains of yellow.

I learned about Hindu wedding traditions and cosmetic uses of turmeric. When I was 19 I went to India for my cousin Radha’s wedding. The morning of the wedding, a paste of turmeric was ceremoniously applied to her face to make her skin fair. It was strange how beautiful she looked with her face covered in yellow. Even the lumpy unevenness and the rings around her eyes were gorgeous; as if her face was painted, hand-made.

All the while I was in India, I was passed from cousin to cousin to be wrapped in splendid saris and painted with an intricate bindi between my eyebrows. “She looks Indian,” my uncle would say when I was finally presentable. “If not for her fair skin.”

This was how I began to confide in turmeric. I grab onto this, the feature that keeps me from being Indian, but something that Indian brides strive for.