 Yes, that's me on the day of my marriage. I got married when I was 24 years old. At that age I aspired, the only aspirations that I had were to get married and have three children. So that's what happened. I got married. It was an arranged marriage. Unfortunately, I wasn't happy in that marriage. And two months down the line, I asked my ex-husband for a divorce. And he retaliated with throwing acid on my face. So this incident happened on 28th May 1998. It's like an anniversary date, you don't forget. I was staying at my mom's house, and the act was planned and very well executed, I would say, because at quarter to nine in the night, he was dressed completely in black. And he threw this liquid on my face and flew abroad the very night he did it. Since I was unhappy in the marriage, I was happy that he did this to me. I was happy because when I had come to my mom's house, people around me had ostracized, like two months in the marriage. Come on, give it a shot. How can you do this? What have you done? Why don't you like him? Questions, questions, pressures of going back to the man that I wasn't happy with. And I was happy that he did this, because I didn't then have to explain to the world that what I felt was really right, that he was not the right person for me. And the time when he threw the liquid on my face, I knew it was acid. And the only thing I prayed for was God, not my eyes. And it's not less than a miracle that I have both my eyes. And I think that is fantastic. It is, I mean, when I saw those Fahri Gulmohar outside my hospital window, I had a hope to live, to live again. But my story really begins after the attack. So this is how I looked. Four surgeries down the line. So I did look even worse, horrendous. And if you see, there are two different faces. And the acid took away my identity as a person. People did not recognize me anymore. My baker, my, you know, I went down and people did not know who I was. Children got scared of me. They ran away. People just plastered themselves to the wall, you know, so that I could pass by. People are afraid to look at me. They were afraid to even talk to me. They were afraid to even invite me to their homes. Suddenly, I had become this horrendous, you know, person. And because I looked different, I looked ugly, you could say. I looked unpleasant. I didn't fit in. Going down was trauma. Going down out of your house was an absolute trauma. The stairs did not stop. The insensitive questioning did not stop. The ridiculous behavior, like, while traveling, while commuting is a big challenge in Bombay for me. If I sit in a crowded bus, you know, I actually find people not sitting next to me. And if somebody does, and if they see my face, they will get up and go somewhere else. I get these bubbly teenagers in trains, you know, who will, oh my God, look at a face, look at a face. Oh my God, I can't see her face. And I'm sitting right there, and I can hear it. You know, and she is blatantly telling me there that I can't look at her face. What does that mean? And these are educated young girls. And I don't know what to do at that point. I don't know whether I should, like, educate her, or whether I should just get up and go to another compartment, or I should just shut, I don't know. I would like to show you all some images asking very pertinent questions. This is a burned survivor who tried to kill herself. She wasn't happy with her life. Are you willing to look at me? Are you interested in me or my story? Will I be laughed at? Would you run to help me or talk to me? Would you shake my hands and touch my face without thinking? And our behaviors to people who are visually different, to people who are disfigured are usually these. Do you agree? Most times I find pity. Oh poor thing, there's awkwardness. People don't know how to come and approach me. People raise eyebrows, hmm, what must be her story really? Look away, awkwardness, staring. And the staring is so intense sometimes that people stare and stare and stare, and even if you give them a smile, they still stare at you. I would like to highlight these things because this is what people with disfigurement go through every day of their lives. They are this isolated section of people who are afraid to come out of their homes because of these attitudes and behaviors. They are also people who conform that they are ugly and they are visually different. Like for me, going to social events, a huge challenge because I don't want to be stared at. Meeting a pregnant woman many years back was a huge challenge for me because I thought, oh God, what if it has impact on the baby? Because I have heard that pregnant women are not supposed to be seeing ugly things, things that disturb them. I myself conform to the ideas that, okay, I don't have this face, so I think I shouldn't be socializing anymore because what if I'm rejected and what if I'm thrown out of a restaurant? And I have been. So what kind of a society are we living in? What kind of messages are we putting across? And these start from very young, I feel, you know, a distinction between the fair and the, you know, a fair child and a dark child. You run for the fair one and say, oh, what a cute, cuddly baby and maybe the dark child would be just wondering, oh, okay, I don't fit in. Portrayals of media, portrayals of our own perceptions of beauty. Somebody somewhere said that a symmetrical face is beautiful. So what happens to people like us then? I think our attitudes are the real disability and I think it's time to address them. It's time to break those stereotypes, those prejudices that we live with. But it becomes difficult for a person like me to go to a place where I know I won't be accepted because you need to dress up a certain way, you need to look a certain way, you need to wear makeup, et cetera. What if I don't have access to all that? You know what happens then? It reduces my chances to social participation. I am pushed to a corner to address this very, very important issue started an organization called Palash Foundation. And Palash, we chose the name Palash because the flower, which is a very obscure looking flower, all in shape, is the perfect analogy for people who are visually different. And hence visually striking. It's also called the flame of the forest. I would like to talk about Dixitra a little bit. What we do is, the idea of Palash is to address social reintegration and livelihoods for people with disfigurement. Now disfigurement could be of any kind. It could be due to burns, it could be due to an accident, a skin disease, a congenital birth defect. It could be anything that has a visual difference, a physical alteration of the body. And here Dixitra, who was unhappy with her life, she tried to kill herself and she survived. She's got a one-year-old son. She comes with a very poor background. She can't afford multiple plastic surgeries that will do wonders to her face like I had the opportunity of. And we went to her home and she lives in this very dingy house with no electricity. And we asked her, so do you take your son out and do you go out to play or do you fetch water? And she said, I did try that, but as soon as I step out of the house, my neighbors shut their doors and go inside. And she said, I don't wanna go out because you know what, I don't want to scare them. And she prefers to stay isolated in her home because that becomes a comfort, her safety. And then what Palash does then is educate people like her. I mean, imagine she believes that she's not good enough now to socially participate. And it's okay for others to reject her and isolate her. What Palash then addresses is social reintegration. So we go to groups of people and we talk. We talk about disfigurement. We talk about stereotypes. We challenge them. We would go to our community and talk to her neighbors and tell them, is this the way one should behave? Is this how you want to kind of, because this is an accident and accidents can happen to anyone at any given point of time. These are a few facts. Over 9,000 burn survivors in Bombay alone and there is no burn registry in the country. So you can't even calculate how many burn survivors. We reach out to only 15 burn survivors in a day because we are a small organization with just two people running the show. There are hundreds contemplating suicide by fire at this very moment. Most cases that we deal with in hospitals are suicidal. Most of them are women. Most of them are from 16 to 25 years old. And there are many more disfigured out there living in isolation. We don't know where these people are. Do you see people like me on the street? One or two maybe? So where are these people? 9,000 survivors in Bombay alone. Where are these people? I would really, really like you all to think about this. Really like you all to think about, you know, the stereotypes, the prejudices that we are living with. Imagine a world, imagine a world where people like me are there in thousands on the street and there will be no differences. Wow. I mean, look at you, look at everyone, look at people around you. All of you are different. Then why a certain section of people who are visually different, who don't look normal, whatever normal is really? Living in isolation, not getting jobs, getting frustrated and wanting to die. Think about it. I'm sorry, I'm not ending at a happy note, but I just, you know, want you all to really, really mull over this. Thank you.