In 2001, a 12-year old Paulami Patel, after her fifth standard semester exams had gone to her paternal uncle’s home in Hyderabad to spend summer vacations with her cousins. Her days were filled with laughter, and mindless playing until one afternoon when she decided to do a role-play with her cousin. They both pretended to fish on the balcony of the second floor of their home. It was just another normal day with kids engaged in their playful activities, and elders relaxing downstairs after lunch. Upstairs, Paulami, while role-playing, attached a metal utensil with her iron rod that would act as a hook, and flung it out of the balcony, pretending it to be the sea. Accidently the rod slipped out of her hand and tangled itself in the low-hanging electric wires. Assuming them to be wires meant to hang washed clothes, Paulami reached out for the rod. Shockingly, it was a live wire that struck her with an 11,000 volts electric current!

She was trembling and bleeding beyond belief. The current intensified further when in between the trembles, she came in contact with a nearby steel chair. Somehow she could yell once before she slipped out. The power went off, and her burned body collapsed on the floor. Hearing her cry, her relatives rushed to the balcony only to find an unconscious bleeding Paulami on the floor with her clothes torn apart. They rushed her to the Apollo hospital where they were informed that she had sustained about 80% burning. Her parents were summoned at once. Her mother refused to believe that something serious could have happened to her, but her father was more attuned to reality. They were shattered to find their young daughter wrapped head-to-toe in bandages, fighting for her life in the ICU. 

“The doctors thought that it was a miracle I survived. Because in most cases, the patient dies on the spot. The current had travelled through my right hand and left through my left foot. While my right hand was severely damaged, my left foot had no skin, muscles or tissues left. I lay naked for a week in the burns ward. When the gangrene in my right hand had begun to spread, doctors were flown in from Mumbai for a second and third opinion. Within a week from the day of admission to the hospital, my right hand was amputated,” says Paulami, speaking to The Better India.

With one month in Apollo hospital where she received her primitive care, she was allowed to be shifted to the Breach Candy hospital, Mumbai via air ambulance. There she spent about eight months to get closer to normalcy as much as she could. 

“There were too many corrective and re-corrective surgeries. The doctors wanted to save my left hand and foot. But since there was no skin or muscle left, they decided to cut open my abdomen and attached my left hand to it for two months. I was bedridden. The idea was to transfer flesh from my abdomen to my left hand to make it operable. In a 12-hour surgery, they cut open my calves and transplanted two 12-inch sensory nerves to my left hand,” she says.

The young girl was unable to fathom why she did not have a hand anymore. Besides, everyone who visited her showed deep remorse that would act as a constant reminder of her unforgettable tragedy. People exclaimed how her life is doomed, even more so because she was a girl. Her aspirations, in the noise of sympathy, were dying a slow terrible death. At such a time, it was her parents who shield her. 

“My father came up with a simple rule. He said none of them could speak to me. The only way anyone was allowed to see me is if they told me a joke and I told one in return. And I cannot tell you how that helped me recover. Lying in that 4×4 room, 24×7, I would look forward to meeting people and sharing jokes,” says Paulami. 

This not only gave Paulami the strength to cope up with her loss but also gave her a new perspective on life. She emerged out of remorse and started brimming with confidence. She knew that life would henceforward be difficult, but she won’t lose the battle in self-pity. Her undying optimism compensated for the disability she was imposed with. 

Witnessing her spirit, her school and teachers turned out to be a massive support system. They knew that Paulami would become lonely if she got demoted to the lower standard because of her year-long absence in school. They instead supplied her with all the notes and resources to study at the hospital and even facilitated a writer who helped her write her final examinations. Thus, she was promoted to the next year with her batch itself. The same year, she was operated for a prosthetic arm. 

“Using a prosthetic arm was very difficult. It was heavy, and my amputated arm was relatively tender. So, I first learned to lift it. Slowly, I decided to push myself to write. In the initial days, each letter I wrote was large enough to fit a page. But I was undeterred. So every day, I would diligently try and write five pages. It was also the time when I was reading a children’s novel, Matilda. So I decided to copy the entire story on book. By the time I reached the end of the book, I had learnt to write one statement in one line.”

 It’s inspiring that Paulami, who lost her hand at a tender age, and whose self-esteem was challenged by fate, today is an MBA-graduate and a successful entrepreneur. She single-handedly manages her entire family business that deals in heavy machinery. Her personal life is blossoming with love. Paulami, whose future was tagged as doomed by society because she would apparently never find a suitable match has found selfless love in Sundeep Jotwani, her childhood best friend. 

“I have known Sundeep for thirteen years now. We met just after school and hit it off as best friends. He is the sweetest guy I know. Even in the initial days, he never asked me anything about my accident upfront. Everything he knew was through my friends. The best part about our relationship is that we communicated without words. From the beginning, he always understood what I needed and did it before my having to ask.”

They married four years ago, and it seems their love is still blossoming like a fresh daisy. They truly define compatibility, understanding, and care. 

“Taking help from him was never embarrassing or awkward for me either. We fell into a comfortable routine. When we entered a restaurant, and I couldn’t make smaller pieces of the food on my plate, he would listen to my order, call it to his plate, make pieces and then pass it to me. He has been my rock-solid support through and through.”

We all have different ideas about ourselves in our heads, which often are the chains we have voluntarily tied ourselves to. Paulami Patel is a shining example of how we are what we think. Had she chosen to think about herself as a handicap, she would have been one for her entire life, indulging in self-pity and cursing her fate. Instead, her choice to think about herself as a normal girl for whom the sky is limit kept the flame of hope alive in her heart. She enjoys life like any normal person would. She’s adventurous who loves Sky-diving, bungee jumping, and motor-driving. She is passionate about writing and business, both. Her mother, in order to encourage her, has connected her with several people who use prosthetics but are still actively soaking in life. Today, she, in turn, has also turned into an inspiration for many. 

 “I have seen both sides of life–as an able-bodied person and a person overcoming disability. All I want to say is that this is all a part of life. Don’t shut yourself down, don’t hold back. There is so much more to life and a whole world left to conquer. So what if I don’t have a hand, I will still live my best life.” 

The post Paulami Patel Lost Her Right Hand At 12, But Not Her Hope To Live A Normal Life! appeared first on Doer Life.

That is exactly what we, at Doer Life won’t be indulging into. The world deserves to know about Sunitha Krishnan for her phenomenal work of saving thousands of children and women from human trafficking and preventing second generation prostitution, by risking her life multiple times. The fact that she was gang-raped at 15 is just that – a fact. We don’t want this one fact to garner so much attention that it overshadows the honour her relentless work deserves. Sunitha Krishnan is not just a rape victim. She is a hero to those thousands of women and children whom she has liberated from the dark worlds of flesh trade and forced prostitution.

Sunitha, born in 1972 in Bangalore, was a social activist for the underprivileged since childhood.  As a child, she taught dance to children with special needs. By 12, she was running small schools for the poverty-struck kids; and by 15, she was actively campaigning for the literacy of the Dalits. During this phase, she came at loggerheads with a few men who saw the young Sunitha as a threat to their patriarchal set-up of the society. When they couldn’t stop her, they decided to break her by raping her. Needless to say, the incident was devastating, but in retrospect, Sunitha feels that it wasn’t the rape that affected her as much as the way she was looked upon after it happened.

“What affected me more was the way society treated me, the way people looked at me. Nobody questioned why those guys did it. They questioned why I went there, why my parents gave me freedom. And I realized that what happened to me was a one-time thing. But for many people, it was a daily thing.”

She introspected that if a one-time incident can be so catastrophic for her, what about the plight of those women who face it every day? Inspired by her own struggle, she founded Prajwala, which translates to an eternal flame, with her late brother Jose Vetticatil. She first resolved to successfully convert a brothel in southern Hyderabad into a school for the children of sex workers to prevent them from getting into prostitution because of lack of education and alternative to lead a better life. Since then she has rescued and rehabilitated countless women and children. “When I started, I was left nauseous and shocked by the sight of 15-year-old victims. Today, I am not surprised even when it is a 5-year-old victim,” she sighs.

Our delusional comforting walls in life blinds us from the perils of others. Sunitha narrates one such incident; “A 14-year-old girl was rescued by our partner organisation, Justice & Care, in a brothel house near Hyderabad. During the rescue itself, the team was shocked to note that the girl could hardly move and yet there was a customer in the cubicle when the rescue happened. As soon as the victim was admitted in our shelter for rehabilitation, we had to shift her to the hospital as she was very sick and could barely walk. In the hospital, we found out that practically all her organs were malfunctioning and both her kidneys had already failed. The child eventually died after 10 days. I am yet to come to terms with the impunity of such human beings who have no qualms to trade a dying child or buy sex from a dying child. This attitude bordering dehumanisation, to me, is the root of many such crimes. I’ve come to realise that law alone cannot change things until the change comes from within each and every one of us. We need to value the human body and start respecting boundaries.”

Sunitha has been attacked 14 times by the traffickers who don’t want her to take away their earning resources off the streets. However, even an acid attack or permanent damage to one of her ears during one such attack couldn’t budge her.  Along with rescuing, her organisation provides moral, economic, legal, and social support to the victims of trafficking. During initial years, Sunitha had to sell off her jewellery and even most utensils of her household to make ends meet.

What is noteworthy about Sunita’s efforts is that instead of only relying on the struggle to bring laws that can prevent such crimes, she also prominently focuses on the root cause – the mindset. In an interview with The Logical Indian, she says, “The main problem is the attitude of people. Until you stop looking at a woman’s body as something that can be bought, sex trafficking will never end. There are many issues. The main issue is the men who are willing to pay for sex, the men who are willing to satisfy their libido by paying for a child. That attitude, that bodies can be used and thrown, that attitude scares me.”

In order to combat this attitude, Prajwala has initiated two unique campaigns- The Swarakhsha Campaign, that is its first ever survivor-led campaign to reach 1 million people. The second is Men Against Demand (MAD) which aims to bring sensitivity in men against buying sex, and also encouraging other men to abandon it.

Every year, about 2 lakh women and children become victims of sex trafficking. One of every fourth person forced into prostitution is a child, at times, even as young as five-year-old. A majority of them later become HIV positive. The damage done, not only to their bodies but also minds is irreversible. The atrocities behind the closed doors of brothels scar them for life. Rightly so, Sunitha feels that a major shift in attitude is needed in how we bring up the sons of India. After all, who are the customers in this trade? She says,

“Something has gone seriously wrong in how are we bring up our sons. There are boys who are 20 or 25 years old who go to brothels to buy sex. Then there are 70-year-old men who look at their 5-year-old grandchildren as potential objects to have sex with. There is something seriously wrong. I think we need to redirect our attention from the women to the men. We need to talk about how we can change the attitude of men. Every time a Nirbhaya happens, everybody talks about apps for women safety, about the importance of pepper sprays, about martial arts for women – this only passively fosters a regressive attitude towards women and girls. Such overly victim-oriented thinking is never solution-oriented. It only leads to more paranoia and more regressive attitude. By shifting our focus towards men and boys, we are moving in the right direction.”

Sunitha feels that her efforts wouldn’t have yield fruits without active participation from various stakeholders such as the police, media, and the government authorities. Her efforts have won her multiple awards including the honourable Padma Shree in 2016.

She continues to battle for the women and children who were ripped off their right to lead a dignified human life for the sadistic pleasures of a few men. As a world, we have to cross an infinity to make it equal and just. However, as long as we have people like Sunitha Krishnan, we know at least the injustice is constantly being fought and won over.

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