Ria Sharma: How a young Delhi Woman is Reviving Hopes For Acid Attack Survivors??

As a boy, I can’t exactly tell how girls take this issue so I would like to tell my visitors that so further Ria Sharma will talk on this topic

I founded an organization called, ‘Make Love Not Scars’ when I was twenty-one.
I’m 23 right now.
And, before I actually get into,
how I formed this organization,
and what it was all about,
I want to play a short video, to show you,
who I work with and what I work for.
and, hopefully, then you’ll kind of have a better understanding,
and, I’ll actually have to explain everything lesser.
So, um, I’ll come back right after this video.
So, I’m just gonna tell you a little bit about my journey.
Make Love not Scars started as just an idea for a documentary.
When I was in my third year of college,
at Leeds College of Arts,
which is in the UK,
and, I was studying fashion,
absolutely hated the subject,
like, couldn’t understand it more than anything else.
And, the problem with me is, I can’t,
work on something if I’m not inspired to work on it.
So, I just can’t, simply have to be inspired.
So, in my third year, I kind of realized, that,
you know, if I don’t get my act together,
I’m going to fail,
and, then, my dad’s going to kill me,
because he has already spent so much money, like making me study in the UK.

So I decided, I was like okay, you know, I have got to do something now.
And, I always kind of had,
this, passion for women’s rights and women’s empowerment.
But, I never really had the capacity,
the will or the passion to actually,
follow through on these interests of mine.
Then, in the third year when I finally realized that I should be doing something,
I stumbled upon a picture of an acid-attack survivor.
And, when I stumbled upon this picture,
it was of this girl named Tuba.
I’ve actually never met her, surprisingly.
But, I saw this photo, and, her face was completely damaged,
and, she was holding her hand up against her face,
and, her hand was completely normal.

I, don’t know why
but that created a very,
bizarre comparison in my head.
and, I just couldn’t get rid of it.
So, the next day I went back to my professors and I was like,
you know, I have this picture of this acid-attack survivor,
and to be honest, I just found out what an acid attack actually is,
I didn’t even know what it was.
Can you help me do something about this?
And,
my professors were
the catalyst in my journey.
They, literally, saw the picture and they were like,
Okay!, Let’s do something about this.
And, I was like, “What?”
And, they were like, “Come back the next day, we’ll figure it out.”
So, when I went back the next day,
they had already, kind of, spoken to my dean,
and they gave me a video camera.
And they said, “Go back to India,
in your last semester of college, and make a documentary.”
And my first question, I was extremely self-centered,
I loved the UK. I was like, “Oh my god!”
I don’t want to go back. My last semester of college, like,
I just thought they would like,
see the pictures and be like, “Okay,
make like a book or something”, and I was just like,
“Okay. Do you really think I should go back?”
And, they were like, “Ya ya, you should definitely go back.
I think they were trying to get rid of me.
But, I came back,
and, I was like,
I met my first survivor.
And, I was just, I was hurt.
It was like a drug. I don’t know.
It was this, weird, magical,
I, I, I still, I don’t even know how to explain it.
It was just, it was so mysterious to me,
I think the mystery of this whole,
um, of these stories being locked behind closed doors,
I just couldn’t, just let it be.
So, I started making this documentary, and I was,
interviewing multiple survivors,
and, you know,
and I think, before you know it, you kind of get, emotionally attached as well.

so, that’s what happened.
I fell in love with it.
couldn’t fall out of love.
Then,
I kind of realized that when I was interviewing these girls,
you know,
I realized that none of them had gotten justice.
None of them had gotten that compensation from the government.
None of them, you know, they were not in a good state.
But, the only thing that I saw,
even though I saw all of this misery through all of them,
I saw that they had the will to want to do something.
And, you know, that’s an amazing thing.
because, once they have that, my job is have done already.
So, once I realized that, you know,
there are external factors that are holding these girls back,
from doing these things,
Then I was like Okay, that’s it. We’ve got something to work with, here.
And, I remember,
the exact point at which I decided.
I was like, that’s it.
This needs to stop. We have to do something about this.
Sheila. Sheila is sitting right there.
Sheila calls me up and she is like,
Oh! You know I have a case for you, it’s in Bangalore.
At that point, I was very impulsive. I was very spontaneous.
Thank God for that.
And, I literally ran to Bangalore with my little camera,
and I was like, I’m going to shoot this, you know,
the hospital and staff. It’s going to be great footage.
And,
okay, turns out you can’t shoot in hospitals,
by the way. So, that was a fail.
But, I, literally,
I went to Bangalore. I met this one survivor.
Her name is Haseena.
Who, to date is a role model to me.
And, Haseena is completely blind.
And, she can type a text message faster than me.
And, that is saying something.
Besides that, she also has a full-fledged job and she also kind of,
you know, takes care of her whole family,
but, the texting part was way more impressive to me.
And, Haseena takes me to meet this survivor,
in the hospital, that, you know, I wanted to shoot.
But, which never happened.
And, I, kind of, you know, I was ignorant
I was ignorant as hell. I didn’t know what anything meant.
So, we reached the hospital, and, I’m like,
You know, this one’s going to be a cakewalk. We can do this.
And, I don’t think I realized what a ‘ward’ meant,
at that time.
I thought, you know, we’ve got a Max. We’ve got a Fortis.
And, you know, this is going to be fine.
This hospital is going to be clean.
And, um, turns out, the award has more than one bed.
I didn’t know that.
Okay, even if I did, I did not think about,
this aspect of the whole thing.
So, um, in government hospitals,
when you enter the Burn’s ward,
they literally have an iron gate that locks behind you.
I don’t even know why that exists.
But, it was very scary.
And this guy literally locks the door behind me and,
I look at him and I’m like, “Why are you locking the door?”
Like, what if I want to come back out?
Stuff, and he’s just like, “You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”
Be brave. And I’m like, what am I going to be brave about?
What’s? What’s in here? What’s going to happen?
He’s like. And then this psychologist comes.
and she’s like, “Okay I’m going to take you around the ward now.”
And, you know, if at any point you are scared,
feel free to hold my hand.
And I said, “Why am I going to be scared? Like, what’s happening?”
I, literally, walk into this ward. She was right. The guy at the door was right.
I was astonished. I,
you know, you see horror movies, and,
now I am, I literally know where they get,
their inspiration from.
These wards are, what nightmares are made of.
I still have bad dreams about it.
There were about thirty beds in the ward.
But, there were seventy people on the floor.
And, these people were naked,
but, it didn’t matter because they were so burnt that didn’t have any features on their body, so,
there were masses of flesh on the floor,
It was burnt flesh on the walls.
There was blood, syringes, you name it.
Like, this is honestly what nightmares are made of.
And, then I see this lady,
as soon as I walk into the ward,
and, she is literally sitting up straight in bed with her legs crossed.
And, every inch of her is,
completely burnt and it’s raw flesh. Like, it’s red,
there are blood and stuff.
But, very little blood.
And she just had this like, one strand of long hair,
coming out from her head, like her scalp,
and, it came down till there,
which kind of symbolized that I know that she had long hair in the past.
And, I found out that she’d just been burnt for a dowry case.
And, she literally looks up at me,
and she starts like, waving like this, and starts smiling.
Oh my god! I will never forget that.
But, you know, she passed away two days after that, but,
The point is, that, everything that I saw in that ward,
was so gruesome that,
you know,
sometimes in life, you have two options and,
at that point, I had two options.
I was like, either you can just go back. Go back to the UK,
chill, we’ll party, we’ll go clubbing,
you know, put on a good dress.
Or, you can like, stick around and we can actually change this,
and, you know, I don’t think that was,
even a doubt in my mind, because,
I wanted to change the situation.
I wanted to make sure that these girls got what they deserved.
I wanted clean hospitals.
I wanted, I wanted justice.
Justice is the hardest part, but,
so I wanted to kind of change stuff.
But the problem that I faced was,
I didn’t know how I was going to do this.
I have no background in this field, I,
I don’t even know how to make a document to open an NGO,
but, thankfully I met all the right people.
And, hence, Make Love Not Scars.
And, now we help over 60 survivors all over India,
And, we actually, launched our first rehabilitation center for acid attack survivors yesterday,
so I’m very excited about that.
So, this center is going to be my dream project.
Like, since I started, we’ve finally gotten there.
Finally, got the funding,
everything’s great.
We’re finally going to be able to take in girls,
teach them skills, reintroduce them back into society.
And, that’s the next phase on my journey, and,
I’m really, really, really looking forward to it.
Oh, also, we work in all aspects of rehabilitation, completely forgot.
Make Love Not Scars looks at medical, legal, financial, and educational
So, if you know acid attack survivors, send them my way, we will help.
Now, I actually want to introduce you to someone extremely, extremely special.
Was probably ** nervous than I was,
and that’s saying something.
Her name is Reshma.
Reshma is the face,
of, um,
one of the biggest,
Reshma is the face of one of the biggest social media campaigns you’ll ever learn.
We did a set of three viral videos.
And, her video, her first video got over 1.5 million views in three days.
So, um,
Reshma is campaigning to ban the open sale of acid.
She has a petition for the Prime Minister,
that has over three and a half lakh signatures.
And, we are going to take it to him soon.
So, I’m going to let Reshma tell you a story
and her life as a campaigner.

Giving Power of writing to Reshma Bano Qureshi

Hi!
My name is Reshma Bano Qureshi.
I was 18-years old when this incident happened to me.
It was 7 AM in Allahbad and I was on my way to sit for an exam.
I was accompanied by my sister and two friends.
While we were on our way, my brother-in-law was standing at a distance…
..with a bottle of acid, they suddenly appeared in front of us.
He held my sister’s hand and threw acid on her face.
It was then that my sister shouted for me to run,
but before I could comprehend anything…
two of his friends held me by my hair and pinned me to the ground.
Then, he threw acid on my face too.
I wailed, a lot of people gathered, but no one helped.
Finally, a stranger made us sit on his bike and got us to the hospital.
As we reached the hospital, they refused to treat us.
They wanted an FIR to be filed before they could treat us.
Then, I was sent to the police station.
Then, to another police station where they took three hours to take my verdict.

I was in a really bad condition, my face was burning,
I didn’t know what to feel at that point.
It was after those 3-4 hours when they started my treatment.
It went on for another three months, my treatment in Allahabad.
But, my condition only worsened.
Later, I was taken to Mumbai, where I was treated, but it still wasn’t working out.
Then, I came home.
As I looked into the mirror and couldn’t recognize myself anymore
was when it really hit me, what had happened.
I used to think about how I used to be, and what I’ve become today because of a few people.
I wasn’t able to recognize myself.
Then, I accused my family of sending me to give that exam.
I said it wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t ask me to go.
Then, I met Ria ma’am.

She showed me pictures of a lot of acid attack victims.
It gave me a lot of strength.
When I looked at Lalita, it didn’t seem like anything at all happened to me.
I felt, she was going through a lot more than I was.
Together, we supported and motivated each other.
Ria ma’am gave me the courage to move on in my life.
I was hopeless and miserable, I didn’t want to live.
All I could think about was, that society gives a lot of importance to one’s appearance.

But, Ria ma’am instilled courage in me.
Later, I participated in a challenge put forth by
‘Make Love Not Scars’ to ban the open sale of acid.
Then, I starred in a video- Beauty Tips by Reshma
I felt really good when I was first associated with this campaign.
I felt I was doing this for all the girls around me.
I didn’t want what happened to me to happen to anyone else.
Only the one who suffers knows how painful this is.
This shouldn’t happen, it ruins the victim’s life.
I’m still working on this campaign and that makes me happy.
And….
I didn’t know that…
Before this incident, I never knew something like this existed.
What I saw and heard as I went ahead, gave me the courage to do this
not only for myself but, for everyone around me.
I made this video because we didn’t have the freedom to live freely,
that’s why I made this video.
I didn’t want anyone to through what I went through
I want to tell you that appearance isn’t everything.
inner beauty is more important.
It was tough for me to leave my house when I suffered from this attack.
I was stared at, questioned…
I couldn’t go anywhere without hiding my face.
But, that isn’t how it should be. Appearance isn’t everything.
One should be beautiful inside out.