Dear Tannishtha, chill. The comedy show continues even outside the set you walked out of. It spills out across the seven seas and that's the way it's been since times immemorial.

Take the English language for instance.

"Black sheep" means a wayward, no-gooder. Ever heard of bad "white sheep"?

Look at the language you and I so easily use. "Black as thunder", "black scowl", "dark clouds", "dark secret" and "dark night", all portray menace and negativity. I've never heard of a "white scowl", have you?

The devil is always black, the angel is white.

Every virtue is white.

Purity is white - pure as the driven snow, that is, white.

Life isn't "fair". Fairness is a synonym for what's balanced and just, as in, "in all fairness" and "fairplay". When there's impartiality, do we ever say, "in all darkness"?

Peace is represented by a white dove.

"Black Friday" is for a tragedy, it's never a "White Day" when there are fatalities.

Let's return to India and to the film industry. Lyricists have always used "gori" as a substitute for beauty - Gori tera gaon bada pyara. Has any lyricist ever penned an ode to a dusky beauty? Only eyes and hair must be black - "Yeh kaali kaali aankhen " but it has to be "gore gore gaal". What cheek, right?

When I got married, it was like Chetan Bhagat's 2 States . How could the fair (therefore good-looking) boy marry the dark (read, ugly) south Indian girl? Dharma Productions didn't go anywhere there and played safe with a pretty and not dark-skinned Alia Bhatt.

Even when my son was born, a member of the family repeatedly compared the baby's bottom to the "fair, white as milk" bottoms of their children.

One heard that when Bipasha Basu made her debut in Ajnabee , co-star Kareena Kapoor gave her a rough time and labelled her "kaali billi". Even superstitions are based on the "black is evil" premise: kaali billi , black cat. A black cat crossing your path portends bad times. But a white kitty purrs. Curses are black, blessings are white.

You're dark and brooding, never white and moody.

Films that are stark, depressing, bloody or oppressive, fall under "noir cinema", familiar to non-mainstream actors like Tannishtha. Can you ever call anything unhappy "white cinema"? And "Black Beauty" is best suited for horses, not girls.

But "tall, dark and handsome" works for the male. In India, Krishna (the flute-playing god, not the one who hosts the comedy show) has always been dark but he was a hit with the opposite sex. The rule doesn't apply to the "fair sex".

There is the occasional voice of protest against fairness creams and the world breaks into applause when Kangana Ranaut refuses to endorse one. But Shah Rukh Khan still peddles the "fairness is confidence" message and his legion of fans lap it up.

Do I have a problem with it? Actually I don't. Because I think it's a "fair" choice. If someone aspires for a lighter skin, he has every right to do what it takes to get what he wants. The flip side is equally acceptable. If someone wants to stay tanned, so be it. Somehow, a comment about skin tone doesn't annoy me, its inherent shallowness only amuses me.

A senior actor and politician has never tired of his outdated "joke" about me that I don't drink tea or coffee, "Because, like Rekha, she fears she will become kaali ." Guffaw, it's humour.

It really is. Because body shaming, or skin profiling as in Tannishtha's case and mine, is water off a duck's back. Oops, only this duck isn't white. But really, opinions and comments show only the speaker in poor light. Besides, the joke is increasingly on the fairness-obsessed because they are a shrinking minority. From Priyanka Chopra to Deepika Padukone, girls are rewriting the rules of success and beauty and lyricists will have to change their "gori " lines.

By the way, Krushna Abhishek, the host of the show, is himself married to the dusky and very attractive Kashmira Shah. And I wonder what she has to say about her husband's sense of "humour".

Tannishtha, you were totally right in taking a stand. Humiliation is not humour. The PR person who fixed the comedy show appearance for you and the team of Parched , told me that when her staffer called from the set to say that you were walking out, she was all for it. "I cringed," she said. "Why should Tannishtha or anybody take such offensive remarks?"

After you objected to the "comedy" and walked off, you called it "regressive" and "racist". The stand you took was perfect.

But I do want to say, chill.

As I've just proved with all the examples given above, Comedy Nights Bachao isn't hosted by Krushna Abhishek alone.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is a senior journalist and author