24 July,2011 08:55 AM IST | | Lhendup G Bhutia
Thirteen years after her ex-husband hurled acid at her face, Shirin Juwaley is forming an NGO to help the disfigured, while taking out time to write a fellowship paper on normative ideas of what it is to be beautiful
Early in the photo shoot, there seems to be a problem. Just like the photographer would have wanted, the windows are open and the light falls directly on the subject. But Shirin Juwaley has her glasses on, resulting in a glare. The photographer, however, hesitates to ask her to take them off.u00a0 She looks at him, and before he can take his first shot, she orders, "Wait." "Can I remove my glasses?
Shirin Juwaley sits in her Mazgaon residence bedroom, while her mother
and help get on with daily chores in the kitchen. Pic/ Vikas Munipalle
I don't want to hide this." "Of course," he says, matter-of-factly.u00a0u00a0Juwaley's face is disfigured, spotted with burn marks, lacerations of the skin that stretch from her temple right down to the chin, some of them mirrored on her hands seen under a bright blue tee she is wearing that morning. Thirteen years ago, when Juwaley was 24 and just out of college, her husband of two months, Mubin Mulla, hurled a bottleful of Nitric acid on her face. She had had the temerity to ask for a divorce after realising he was abusive and egotistical.
The staircase in Juwaley's Mazgaon home, just like her face, still bears traces of that night. White spots left behind by drops of acid dripping from her face to the ground. "It was 8.45 at night, and I was returning home. He was hiding behind the stairs," she recalls. All Juwaley remembers next is how smoke emanated from her face, and the bathroom where she rushed to splash water on herself, was enveloped in fumes.
"At that moment, the only thing I could think of was, 'God, I hope my eyes are fine'." While she did not lose her vision, which is often the case in acid attacks, Juwaley began to suffer from shortsightedness, and now, can't do without her glasses. The burns had shortened her eyelids, and for years, she was unable to sleep because she could barely close her eyes. Now, 16 reconstructive surgeries later, the eyelids have been elongated, and her nostrils, that had almost closed, have opened up.
Mulla, however, went scot-free. He fled to Kuwait, and last she heard, he had remarried there. Juwaley has moved on too. She has been busy coping with her altered life, and has now graduated to the next stepu00a0-- to provide help to those in situations like hers. The idea is to start a non-governmental organisation to help people with disfigurement cope with life. Fittingly named Palash (after the flame-like flower), the NGO was registered in May, and will initially work with burn survivors.
For a full year after the attack, Juwaley lived indoors. Even her first visit outside, a short walk in the neighbourhood, was well planned, with a niece in tow. "I did not know I would be treated like a ghost," she says, recalling how people stared at her, and refused to speak to her. On one occasion in a local train, a group of young college students covered their eyes, saying they could not tolerate the sight of her. An equally unfeeling clothes store attendant refused to help her.
Juwaley had started to wear a burqa to get around without getting noticed. In 2001, she travelled to the World Burn Congress in Michigan, US, an annual international conference that brings together burn survivors. "Seeing so many people, who were more disfigured than me but so confident and full of life, had a positive impact on me."
The first thing she ditched when she got back, was the burqa. As part of a fellowship programme, Juwaley is currently writing a paper on the normative ideas of beauty. Her work will look at how stereotypical concepts of beauty exclude many. She has managed to interview three people so far.
One of them is visually impaired, and called Bhoot (ghost) by friends and neighbours. She has been named so because of her tendency to focus on the person before her although she is unable to see. The other two are burn victims, one of whom was forced out of her job as a teacher after an accident disfigured her face. She refuses to share more details about the survivors, not having sought permission from them, but the former teacher, she says, has become a tarot card reader.
"An acid attack is probably not as traumatic as what follows," Juwaley shares, while her mother cooks in their small kitchen that lines the drawing room at the rear end. "And you know what?" she asks midway in the interview, "All those films like Khoon Bhari Maang are a lie. No surgery can make you look like a supermodel."
She refers to the over-the-top Hindi film starring Rekha, whose face is mutilated by a crocodile attack but is able to make a career as a model after just one surgery. "At best, they can give you basic features. You just learn to make the best of life from then on."
