LOSING MY IDENTITY

Sheetal Surti, 42, lost all the pigmentation in her skin - and with it, her image as a British Indian

- SARAH WHITELEY

Shaking hands with a new colleague, I saw her glance at my name badge, a confused expression on her face.

‘Sheetal?’ she said. ‘That’s an unusual name.’ I knew what she was thinking – my name didn’t match my appearance as a white woman. ‘My parents went through a hippy stage and gave me an Indian name,’ I smiled. It was a lie.

My parents Mina, 69, and Anil, 72, are Indian, but you’d never know from looking at me, because a condition called universal vitiligo has stripped the brown pigmentation from my skin.

It was 1987 and I was seven when my big sister Tejal, then 10, noticed a patch of white skin behind my ear the size of a penny. She pointed it out to my parents, but they had no idea what it was.

Over time, more patches appeared on my face and all over my body. I was too young to be concerned, but my parents took me to the GP, who diagnosed vitiligo, but knew little about it back then.

My parents were sent away with no information about what could be done and no referral to any specialist. As my skin continued to turn from brown to white, they were so worried, particularly as relatives and friends would ask if I had leprosy or skin cancer and would shake their heads and wonder aloud if anyone would ever want to marry me.

SELF-CONSCIOUS

My parents tried to shield me from their worry, but I could tell that every time they looked at me they were very anxious. I was lucky the children at school didn’t comment, but people in the street would stare and I became deeply self-conscious.