A horrifying acid attack may have disfigured Aarti’s face for life, but it could not crush her spirits. Attacked thrice for turning down a marriage proposal, the incident is still fresh in her memory, but she chose not to play a victim. “I don’t want people to know me as an acid attack victim all my life; I want them to know me as Aarti Thakur.”
“life was not easy money wise, but it was still like a fairytale,” she said. Four years ago, my younger sister Swati was also working to support the family and engaged to the man she loved. “I was in a happy space. I, along with my mother and younger sister, lived in a rented house. I gave up my studies to financially help my family. I also got engaged to the man I liked. We were supposed to get married soon. life was smooth, we couldn’t ask for more,” Aarti said.
The three incidents changed her life forever. “My landlady’s son proposed me thrice but I denied his proposal. But even then the relations between my family and theirs remained cordial,” she recalled. It was the twilight of the day when Aarti was returning home from office, she saw a man hurrying towards her.
“You can sense when something wrong is about to happen,” she said. Seconds later, she felt a certain sense of numbness, something had pierced her face. “I felt numb with only blood gushing out profusely. I don’t remember exactly what happened after that until I landed in the hospital room. The doctor told me I was stabbed in the face. I got sixteen stitches,” she added. Adding to her woes, police refused to register her complaint on account of “not knowing the attackers and his intention”.
As time passed by, Aarti became more cautious about her surroundings. “We changed our flat from Malad to Nala Sopara as Malad was a slum area and I feared we could be robbed or attacked again. My landlady asked me about the place we were shifting to. She said she wanted to come and see the flat. She was almost like our family member. She usually called me to ask about my whereabouts and I used to tell her,” Aarti’s voice quivered.
The second incident unfolded again while she was heading home. As she climbed up the stairs to her house on the second floor, two men ran up the stairs, blocked her way and stabbed her on forehead, cheeks and hand. “It seemed like someone wanted to hurt me as much possible. But when we tried to reach police, we could not find a single policeman at the station,” she said.
But it was the fateful evening of January 31, 2012 that gives Aarti nightmares even today. “After the second attack, I never forgot to cover my face every time I ventured out. I clearly remember it was 6:47pm. I was buying the ticket at Goregaon station and as I moved around, the same boy came and threw something at me. I felt that my scarf, my face, my entire body was melting. My face turned silver. Hearing my painful screams, a team of police rushed me to the hospital where they found that I was attacked with acid,” she shuddered.
The interrogation further revealed the three attacks were a conspiracy hatched by the landlady to spoil her impending marriage.
The acid attack was the most painful experience for Aarti, but what followed after that was even worse. Deserted by her fiancé, Aarti was confined to her home for two years. “I didn’t step out of my house. I was even scared of shadows,” she painfully recalled.
“Now I have lost hope that anyone would marry me. The man I loved left me in the middle of the most terrible phase of my life, just to make things even more difficult. The attack took a toll on me,” she went to speak.
But she chose not to play victim. Rising from the ashes like a phoenix, Aarti, being an irrepressible optimist, fashioned a new beginning leaving behind the horrors of the past.
“If I don’t think about myself, no one else will,” said Aarti, adding that she has always been self-motivated.
“I always wanted happiness my mother and my sister to be in a happy space. Therefore I decided to leave behind my inhibitions and decided to step out,” she said.
“I used to cover my face with a dupatta to hide my injury marks during interviews which didn’t make people comfortable. They couldn’t stand having someone in the company whose face was scarred. I gave almost eight interviews in different private companies and faced rejections until I finally landed a job with a real estate firm as a marketing executive,” she said with confidence.