Saira recounts those days: “The wounds smell of dead rats, and when doctors clean them, you feel the scrub down to the bones.” As soon as it was possible, Saira walked out of the hospital. As if an acid attack weren’t cruel enough, victims, not perpetrators, are thoughtlessly shunned. I take that moment to make a silent plea, wishing hard that Alina has an easier time.
When the pain from the acid subsided, Saira had to deal with the very real struggle of returning to society. She’s learning to chin up with Saira’s constant ministrations: “I tell her, you’ve watched your mother ignore them, you also learn to ignore.” She tells me she gets back at them by punning on her bullies’ names. “They call me ‘jaleli’ (burned), and say my name should be Jalina, not Alina,” says the girl, who dreams of becoming an actress one day. Most of her face has also recovered except singed eyebrows and scar tissue on her nose, which bring on major bullying at school. Over the years, Alina’s scars have diminished. (L) Saira immediately after the incident (R) Saira, among other acid victims, was also featured in PNG jewellers ads in the past.
Every year, I meet all of Alina’s teachers and request them to take care of her,” says 34-year-old Saira. “Doctors say that even the slightest injury to the spot cannot be risked. A new bob now shields the vulnerable portion of Alina’s skull after a boy in school poked her there with a pencil. The corrosive liquid had damaged her face, back, and melted a portion of the back of her head, and maggots had festered millimetres away from her brain. When Alina hears this, she quips, “Is that why you visit Haji Ali so often, mummy?” The fifth-grader had remained nonchalant through the conversation, even during the bone-chilling details of her injuries and future risks. His first interaction with Saira was at the Haji Ali dargah. He’s my saving grace,” she smiles.Īrif, who is from Lucknow, came to the city as a zari worker. “He looked after us for months cleaning our wounds, while we couldn’t even dress ourselves. The only male adult around was my husband, Arif (Baig).” Saira says she gave him the choice to leave.
Life got very difficult,” remembers Saira. Alina, only one-year-old then, was in her mother’s lap when they were attacked. The second commercial break on (Mann Kee Awaaz) Pratigya was on when Saira’s sister Najma Jagirdar doused acid on her and their two other sisters Daulat Bi Khan and Reshma Sheikh over a financial dispute. It seemed inopportune to interrupt this homely scene to ask Saira about her life’s biggest tragedy. The 10-year-old wanted to go down to play. I had walked in on a battle of wits between Saira and her daughter Alina.
Beneath shapely eyebrows were kohl-framed eyes, with slightly unmatched lash lines.
HOW LONG FOR ROAD RASH TO HEAL SKIN
But I was looking for the scars – I noticed the lighter lip skin and the darker scar tissue on the left side of her face, running from her upper lip to the length of her sharp nose. She’d left her long dark hair open, held away from her broad forehead. The room was dark, bringing the shafts of light falling on her into sharp relief. I’ve lived in Mumbai all my life, and this was the first time I was boarding a local train to Nalasopara, a far-flung Mumbai suburb – perhaps the last bastion of real estate in the city, a piece of which low- and middle-income families can dream of owning without pawning their lives for a home loan. I reached Saira bano’s locality, hop-walking over rivulets of smelly septic waste on a kachcha road, and first saw her in the window of her tenement overlooking the building passage.
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