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Back in the day, women didn’t really work, and if they did it was probably because they had fallen on desperate times. Things have not changed all that much since.
My family came together, seared with tragedy, but kindled with love.
Years later I realized that kindness knows no bounds and as violent and cruel India can be, it is also home to the gentlest people on earth.
Some things warrant tears and my mother knew that Gulshan would drown if she didn’t let hers flow.
Jamaluddin was a ghost sailing into the past. That was until 28 April 2014. This was the day Jamaluddin called out of the blue, and in a house filled with people, it was Gulshan who happened to pick up the phone. ‘Talaq, talaq, talaq,’ he screamed. Until 22 August 2017, triple talaq was recognized as a legitimate method of effecting divorce among Muslims.
On that narrow street, over a hundred witnesses stood motionless, watching from a safe distance. Not one person stepped forward. Humanity had ceased to exist.
Because of how hard I had been clinging to the man’s back, his shirt had disintegrated from the acid on my clothes. His back had minor burns, which he said he would look into after getting home.
After everything that had happened, they wanted me to worry about my manners?
She asked to be shown the cheapest clothes, but the material was too rough; the doctor had specifically mentioned that rough cloth could lead to more sores and blisters. The shopkeeper, a gentle old soul, read the pain on Gulshan’s face and asked her what was wrong. On hearing her story, he pulled out the softest malmal suit he could find and gave it to her, free of charge. ‘You can pay me back when your sister gets better,’ he said. Gulshan returned with a soft cotton shalwar-kameez with a wide neck. For the second time that day she had witnessed human kindness.
It is just human nature to not care unless a tragedy affects you in some manner.
Every direction I turned, I witnessed full-grown men wiping their tears. I knew many of my relatives present that day had given up their day’s wages to be there for my family, for me.
The true strength of a person’s character cannot be truly identified in times of joy, but rather in when adversity strikes.
I believe in abortions, but this level of depravity is not an abortion. It’s the murder of humanity itself.
the juvenile who caused her death is now twenty-three, rehabilitated by an NGO, and working under a false identity in southern India. He was seventeen when he raped her. I wonder how much wiser a person can get in a few more months, how they can become an ‘adult’ overnight.
The lawyer defending the rapists said that if his daughter had been out so late at night, he would have personally taken her to a farmhouse and burnt her alive.
weaker. I remember that a year or so later I read about a case where a man in the US was caught in a fire. He suffered forty per cent burns and was put in an induced coma. Whereas in India, patients with even eighty to ninety per cent burns are denied morphine. The difference is crippling.
decided to plan my own murder, since in India, an attempt at taking your own life amounts to attempted murder. Suicide is basically illegal. I could be arrested for attempting to commit suicide.
I told the doctor about the pain I was in, and she just nodded. Not once did she say that everything would be alright. For that, I am eternally grateful.
Even today, when I think of how harmful words can be, I think of Dr Jain. ‘Please, I don’t have time for all this nonsense. First you people get your daughters and sisters married to awful men and then cry over the outcome. When are you going to learn?’
I realized an educated man isn’t necessarily the wisest.
Every day, for months, she would call me at 5 p.m. on the dot and speak to me for forty-five minutes to an hour. I would only say hello and she would talk even when I was unresponsive. It was often the happiest hour of my day.
One might expect that images of acid-attack survivors should never be considered to be in violation of social media community guidelines, but this world is an odd place.
‘It takes two minutes to put on blush but only three seconds to burn a face,’ said one of them. ‘Finding the right shade of lipstick is harder than finding concentrated acid,’ said another. ‘Why is a litre of concentrated acid sold cheaper than a 9 ml eyeliner?’
‘I want the survivors to be at our front desks, to be heard and seen, and if anyone has a problem with that, they don’t have to come to our hotels. Why should you be ashamed? It is the world that should be ashamed of what it did to you.’
yes, there is a point to every single campaign we roll out, there is a point to every ‘useless’ fashion show and every single ‘publicity stunt’. All of these efforts have led to actual, tangible change.
I’ve learnt that it is the small changes that ultimately lead to the big ones, and that is the truth I now live by.
All I did after my attack was survive. And that made all the difference.
Change is slow, gradual. You can be a part of it in your own small way.
Be the best version of yourself and the world, I believe, will be a better place.
