Christine Haveford
Pooja Ganatra is a proud Indian woman.
But at a glance you would be forgiven for thinking she was a Caucasian woman.
The 24-year-old was born to Indian parents but has red hair, white skin, freckles and deep emerald eyes.
Sadly, she admits she has spent most of her life being shunned and bullied because people think she’s diseased.
Pooja believes her unique looks are down to her ancestors.
It could be that her appearance was triggered by an ‘evolutionary throwback’, called atavism.
This is where genes are laid dormant for years and appear in future generations.
Meanwhile, the young woman is treated like a local celebrity in her country and shocks locals when she speaks to them in Hindi.
They even try to charge her tourist prices because they think she is a backpacker.
Pooja saays: ‘Indians love to pose for photos with different-looking people from overseas, so I often get people coming up to me asking for pictures.’
‘It’s happened more than 100 times in my life – I have to tell them, “relax, I’m Indian too”.
But her standout looks have made her insecure.
The business woman says she felt overwhelming pressure to conform to ‘impossible’ Indian standards of beauty.
Pooja says: ‘I’d love to get a DNA test one day to discover more about my ancestry because I don’t know anything about it.’
‘I have no idea why I look the way that I do but a test into my genes could explain a lot.’
‘When I was born, my family had never seen anyone who looked like me before because they all have brown skin, black hair and brown eyes, like most Indians.’
The beauty who runs her own clothes manufacturing business continued:
‘When my freckles started appearing everywhere when I was three, because none of my relatives had ever gotten freckles before they didn’t know what they were.’
‘I was rushed to the doctors because everyone thought it was a birth defect or skin disease. I was always the odd-one-out at school, and was routinely bullied.’
‘People would always come up and ask “what are those spots on your face? Why do you have so many marks?”. It was a real mental challenge.’
‘Even in my first year of university, I was pulled aside and told not to wear sleeveless shirts because they were “too eye catching” with my white skin.
‘There was no rule against sleeveless clothing and every other girl dressed like me, yet I was singled out.’
‘When I get into taxis cab drivers start speaking to me in English and are shocked when I answer them in Hindi.’
‘The funniest one is when I’m charged the foreigner price for public attractions because they think I’m a backpacker, so I have to prove I’m Indian.’
‘When I was in America people wouldn’t believe me when I told them I’m Indian. Even the customs officer at the airport had to look twice at my passport and asked me if I’m really from India.’
Pooja’s parents were so worried about their child after she was born they decided not to have any more children.
They felt their daughter’s looks may be a sign that she needed medical treatment and wanted to be able to afford it.
Pooja describes her father Rajesh, 51, as a ‘typical Indian’ looking man.
While her mother Hemaxi, 46, has slightly lighter than average skin and a few freckles, although none on her face.
Pooja says her unique appearance made it extremely difficult to fit in at school. She says she was often singled out and bullied by her classmates when she was a child.
‘Indians are obsessed with pale skin but it has to be clear – any pimples, blackheads or blemishes of any kind are considered really ugly.
But now as an adult, she says she fully embraces her unique looks and feels much happier in her own skin.
‘I always felt like such an oddity until I went overseas and saw all these people who looked exactly like me and it felt amazing.’
She said: ‘After a while I just got sick of trying to change myself and eventually I just decided to accept it.’
‘People tell me to wear foundation and powders to cover my freckles but I’m just not that type of person and I feel beautiful the way I am.’
‘Natural beauty is the most gorgeous thing a woman can wear.’
‘It took a while to learn how to love myself but now that I do, I always dress my best and bring out my biggest smile for anyone who stares at me.
‘I don’t care anymore if people stare at me or judge me because of how I look. I’m too busy loving myself to notice.’
Genetic ancestry testing, or genetic genealogy, is a way for individual interested in family history to go beyond what they can learn from relatives or from historical documentation. This test would benefit Pooja in knowing her family history.
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