Make Love Not Scars – Everyone Deserves Happiness

“Everyone would tell me I was fine but it wasn’t till I saw myself by mistake. I realized how unrepairable it all really was.”

Monica, an acid attack survivor.

Fresh paint on the walls, people at work and I wait. To meet the acid attack victims- survivors in the real sense of the word. I meet Ria Sharma, the person spearheading the building of the rehabilitation center for these women. When Urban Company decided to pitch in, we knew we would be the ones gaining more out of this. After all, our last endeavour with NAZ was extremely heart warming.

Read Everyone Deserves Happiness – Urban Company with NAZ Foundation

A Leeds graduate, what started as a project for a dissertation for Ria, became a lifelong dream. She shares her story “It was my dream to set up a rehabilitation center for the many acid attack survivors. I wanted to provide a space for the survivors to feel comfortable in, to be reintroduced back to society, to live a normal life again.” She encourages me to talk to the survivors, to know more about them. I almost have an aversion to doing so, not because of who they are but because of the fact that their stories might overwhelm me. We’ve all grown up with the belief that everything happens for a reason. What reason could this possibly have? A moment of excruciating pain and a lifetime of scars that don’t heal. But time heals and that is what I learn from the many stories that I hear.

Tarini Dhody, a MLNS (Make Love Not Scars) member reiterates my thoughts. She shares the unfortunate story of Archana, a woman who was scared of needles when she was young. A scorned man in love threw acid on her while she was in her house – the place we feel safest in. Hailing from a small town in UP, she did not have the access to the right medical care. 40 surgeries later she is still able to say “Always keep the faith, there are bad times but there are also good times. And that is the most important thing to remember”. When Tarini shares the many stories she has penned down for MLNS, she adds “I always feel they will cry recounting this horror. But every time I am wrong. There is this almost palpable power resounding from them, it touches me in a way I can’t describe. I see the kind of strength in them I have never seen before.”

Contrary to what many might believe, acid attack victims are not just women. Atif, a survivor, was just about to graduate when it happened. He still believes that he has his whole life in front of him, especially because of his strong support system – his family, who fight to keep his spirits up. I listen to all their stories, I share a few laughs and I get a glimpse of their past – what they did, how they looked. Photographs depicting all the things that once were a part of their life, including their faces. What the photographs don’t portray is the strength and the exuberance these survivors have. They want to live and it shows.

As our Urban Company carpenters and electricians are hard at work, Ria takes a minute to rest and shares her journey , “We started fundraising for the project in September 2015. We raised some funds through a crowd-funding platform (Milaap) and the remainder of the funds came from Magneti Marelli in January 2016, which finally gave us the green light to turn this dream into reality! Setting up the center has been such a great experience. It has been overwhelming how generous everyone has been to help us make this center the best it can be for the survivors.”

She further adds, “Urban Company helped us get the center up and running by assembling all our lights and fans. They also helped us decorate the place by helping us put up frames of various photo’s of the survivors and their achievements till date.  It has definitely made the center look very cozy and welcoming for the survivors!”

The rehabilitation center is an attempt to reintroduce the survivors back to the society, to make them feel as normal as possible. And all of us can do our bit. Please feel free to donate or help in whatever way you can. Let us try and keep their spirits alive.

You can donate (or get in touch with MLNS) by clicking here.