At Being a Woman

That night
Grief inked its vermilion mark
On her silent brow
The world’s chimneys spat sorrow
Into her breathing moon-blood
Night clutched grief
In a hush of tears
While her story
unread,
unbroken
slept beneath
the weight of wounds.

A woman’s honour has been so long tied up in numberless usages long before she knows them and God forbid, if even one speck of accusation or slander ever dirties her honour, that vulnerable spirit is drug through infinite courts and judgements and rumours.
Regardless of how contemporary or liberal we think that we have become, there still stands this harsh reality even in our ‘new age,’ a woman’s honour is still bound by the unseen bonds of ancient rites and traditions.
She bears the responsibility not only of her own behaviour, but of the way the world elects to see her. As the world changes, her fight against cruel standards tragically never does.
That wretch meekly suffers it all bears every blow, every slight, with a hypocritical grin upon her mouth. She conceals the tempest in her heart, and yet addresses all who meet her with sweetness and elegance. For the One above has granted her the might of an ocean unbounded, immense and profound.
It’s true as someone has correctly said:
God gave a woman the ability to bear children,
Because a man was never made mighty enough
To suffer the grief she silently hobbles with each and every day.
There is a holy strength in her agonies, a heavenly fortitude in her mute resignation so frequently overlooked, so frequently unappreciated. Inside her, is the power that sustains the lineage of centuries.

Scattered Efforts of Forgetting

Forgetting someone who’s gotten all “twisted up in the cables of mind” is such a wasted effort. For acid attack survivors, this intermingling turns into a hellish nightmare. The murderer’s violence is not simply remembered. It persists in the mirror, in every social interaction, in the intimate yet transformed topography of her own body.
The science that ‘the harder you try to forget, the more you remember’ is a horrible reality for survivors. Every step they take trying to move beyond their trauma, every step trying to get back to a sense of normal, begins with confronting those things they most want to flee. If the broken heart may in the long run be assuaged by mere withdrawal, the marks of acid are permanent physical exteriors, engendering no escape.
Not even the consolidation process, when memories are made more permanent during sleep, gives us a break. Where I once scuttled under sleep as protection from bereft love, survivors discover to their terror that sleep is the second way in which trauma exploits its creation, tunnelling deeper into their natural. The brain’s same incredible natural healing becomes another source of suffering.
“To understand the realities of acid attacks, we have to acknowledge that this violence extends far beyond initial contact. The acid continues to burn even after the assault. The wounds that follow require hundreds of surgeries, skin grafts and medical procedures over years. This physical pain is only the apparent facet of their suffering”
The psychological scar goes well beyond the scar tissue. Survivors often discuss the sensation that their identity has been stolen, their selfhood vaporised with their skin. Simply existing publicly becomes a mission of courage, as they must survive ogling stares, vicious whispers, and the stifling weight of a society that treats them as pitiful cautionary tales instead of people deserving honour, happiness, dignity and existence.
That craving I used to pen so much about in my idiot scribblings that deep, hungry, soul-aching yearning for connection and acceptance gets blanketed and suffocated by a society that is looming frightened of difference. To be a velvet survivor in a cruel world that will forever punish you for being tender yet demand you are supple enough and optimistic enough to dare love and dream. They are the impossible dream of the greatest strength’s future contradiction: still loving, even after this world has done its worst or its most horrible. Unlike a lot of other violence, acid attacks are meant to be permanent, to far outlast the individual victim and plague them for their entire lives. Families can only watch as their daughters, sisters, and mothers endure pain they cannot remove and discrimination they can’t shield them from. The financial strain ravages families already in turmoil with even the simplest interventions costing hundreds of thousands of rupees and limiting survivors’ opportunities to work which is an undeniable fact. Their kids, their siblings those fortunate enough to have not been killed, traumatized or abandoned by the shuttering a under resourced neighbourhood each cultivate an attitude of understanding that silence is not safe, that hate can manifest into real monstrosity and that monstrosity can have any of us displaced. The trauma radiates, generating new generations who must confront the reality that love and vulnerability can be met by the world with unspeakable brutality.

The Theatre of Truth

The performance at Jain University gave goosebumps and indicates far more than publicity stunt awareness-raising. It helps create an environment in which fear can be chased away by truth, and in which the voices of survivors can echo in the quiet that all too frequently silences them. You can’t discount the significance of the theatrical venue selection. It transforms the audience from distanced observers into witnesses, making it now their ethical obligation to do something about what they now know.
The woman in red, who as she posed with stately grace to commemorate her spirit on agony, is the contradiction of endurance. At once pummelled and indomitable, fragmented and immortal, she’s a breathing testament that genuine strength isn’t an absence of scar tissue, it’s the decision to maintain your heart pounding even after it’s been slashed.
For survivors, memory cuts both ways. She describes how certain survivors come to “de-sentimentalize their memories,” removing any feeling they arrived with, creating an icy barrier between themselves and their pain. It’s a constant reminder of what was and still is. This shortcut emotional numbing might just steal from them the capacity to feel joy and connection.

Exit Wounds

Acid attack survivors have demonstrated resilience, converting agony into victory and blemishes into the mark of a hero. So often, they become educators too, leveraging their experiences to inform others and lobby for more robust legal protections. They fundraise and form support groups and awareness campaigns and they do all this while letting their attackers not have the final say in their story. adult survivors talk about re-learning to love t

Mental Wormhole

The narratives of these acid attack survivors compel us to recall not in a sympathy-laden manner, but rather in a change-inducing manner. Their hurt must be our inspiration to do good, to be good. The red sari-clad woman standing defiantly against us in our college auditorium shows us that survival isn’t merely about getting through. It is turning suffering into strength, solitude into community and silence into advocacy. Her story a memorial to the lost and to the indomitable spirit of survivors. Her story is flawless and raw.
If memory is a scar, it’s our compass heading in the struggle for justice. As we face this horrific violence, let us understand that apathy is complicity. Let’s always #NeverForget, let’s #NeverForget and weep, and above all, let’s #NeverForget #NeverSurrender and fight with the same furor these survivors rise with every morning simply by electing to keep living, loving and battling for a world where such brutality is made inconceivable.

Fault of Lovers

A woman how many roles do we see her play in this world, and yet, we tend to think that she is weak and delicate. But the truth is, a woman is dependent on no one; she is braver and stronger than even the fiercest warriors. Some people blame all this on lovers and their broken, shattered love stories, but that’s not really true. Love itself is the act of surrender it is not about stubbornness or insistence. Love makes us better human beings.
A real lover, simply to see his love, will fast, will pray, will do anything. Daily, he wrestles a fresh combat by himself, imprisoned in the scars of affection, never, never would he desire the slightest ache or affliction to his darling. Instead, he prays. A man who disrespects a woman is of no religion, because religion teaches us right from wrong. Religion is not a barrier that separates, but a trail that leads. No religion on this planet allows a woman to be disrespected. I pray that wherever in this world a woman is grappling daily with cruelty and injustice, fighting a new kind of war with herself and her situation may the Divine shield her, keep her safe and give her strength to endur.

Email address:------------------------- kamranbhatt029@gmail.com