Masaba Gupta Opens Up About Father Sir Viv Richards` Experience With Racism

Masaba Gupta highlights her father`s struggle with racism during his cricket career and criticizes societal prejudices by sharing personal experiences of bias faced during her pregnancy.

Mumbai: Fashion designer-actress Masaba Gupta, who is known for ‘Masaba Masaba’, has spoken about how her father, the legendary cricketer, Sir Viv Richards, faced racism during the peak of his career.

Masaba feels that racism is a societal evil that will continue to affect lives until we fight against it collectively.

She spoke with Faye D'Souza, and said: “Now I know why my father felt so strongly about it (racism) for so many years. Till today, if you ask him, he'll have tears in his eyes or he'll have this rage in him, where he will answer with a lot of pride. He grew up in the worst of times. He played professional cricket at a time when the colour of your skin came in the way of your ability to move ahead in the world. It's there, everywhere. It'll keep being spoken of until we fight for it, and it's only going to happen if everybody fights for it.”

Masaba is the daughter of actress Neena Gupta and Sir Vivian Richards, the latter is a former Antiguan cricketer who represented the West Indies cricket team between 1974 and 1991. He usually came to bat at number three.

Sir Vivian Richards is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen of all time and has been a part of the West Indies squads which won the 1975 Cricket World Cup and 1979 Cricket World Cup and finished as runners-up in the 1983 Cricket World Cup against the Kapil Dev-led team India.

Masaba also spoke about the pregnancy advice that she often gets on how to give birth to a “lighter” child.

She said: "It happened to me just yesterday that somebody came up to me for some pre-natal something, telling me, ‘You must eat a rasgulla every day' because your kid has to turn out lighter than you. And then, 15 days before that, I was getting another pre-natal massage, because that's what I do, and she (her masseuse) said to me, ‘Aap na doodh liya karo (you must consume milk). Saawla nahi hona chahiye, nahi honi chahiye, whatever (your child must not turn out dusky).' It was said with so much innocence. You have no choice – what can I do? Punch my masseuse? No.”