Living with scars, through no fault of her own

Ankit Khadgi

Published at : January 13, 2020Updated at : January 13, 2020 07:58Kathmandu

Malti Agarwal leaves her home for her workplace. She walks down the same road she routinely takes everyday. But a splash of liquid thrown at her face by a man and a woman in a motorcycle sends her in a fit of scream. The acid-attack takes place in the middle of the road while the crowd watches in horror. This incident takes away all traces of the normalcy from her life.

Deepika Padukone and Meghna Gulzar’s Chhapaak details the struggles, stigma and the journey of Malti’s self-love after the attack. The film is a fictionalised account of real life acid attack survivor turned activist Laxmi Agarwal. But the primary preamble of the story is the real portrayal of not just Agarwal, but of many women and girls who have faced this form of violence.

These assaults have increased over the years even in Nepal. Since the fiscal year 2014/2015, as many as 13 women and three men have been attacked with acid. While the first case that made national headlines in recent memory was that of Sangita Magar in 2015. She was assaulted by her neighbour Jiwan BK, who had barged into the then 16-year-old’s tuition centre and flung acid at her. The latest is that of 15-year-old Muskan Khatun on September 2019. The 9th grader at Tribhuvan Hanuman Secondary School in Birgunj was assaulted on her way to school.

In India, this has been far more frequent and dangerous. Just a day after Chhapaak’s premiere, a 14-year-old went through the same assault in Lucknow.

It would be, therefore, an understatement to say the subject of the film couldn’t have been more relevant. But there were some sceptics of how the film will present the issue, or rather, represent the side of the attack survivor—of which, it is relieving to see that the makers have taken a sensitive approach.

The writer duo, Gulzar and Atika Chohan, have refrained from portraying the lead character as someone you need to feel pity for. Rather, she is fleshed out like any other character, with ambitions and the desire to be financially independent. But it is the portrayal of the attacker that shows the filmmaker’s maturity in handling the sensitive subject.

Staying true to the real life events, the motive behind the attack on Malti is ‘to teach her a lesson’ for not accepting the attacker’s romantic advances. This has been the main reason behind many of the acid attacks in both India and Nepal. Even in Khatun’s case, a friend of the person whose advances she had rejected had assaulted her. 

The film also addresses this influence of toxic masculinity that equates women to play a submissive role, and a complete disregard to women’s consent. The filmmakers are also careful to showcase that it wasn’t just a one-off case, but is intrinsically woven into the social and cultural fabric.

On the very first day of the movie’s release, Zonta Club of Kathmandu, a local club of Zonta International, an organisation that works in the field of women empowerment, organised a special screening of the film for more than 500 people, including acid attack survivors, chemical shop owners, and media. The audience inside the packed hall even let out a collective gasp at certain moments of the film, especially when acid was thrown at the women’s faces.

This is the influence that a film can bring, says Jenny Khadka, an acid attack survivor and an activist who was also at the screening. “It was really inspiring to see a mainstream Bollywood actor portraying a role of an acid attack survivor,” she says. “Films are undoubtedly a powerful medium to grab people’s attention, and when such social causes is the subject matter, many people will be able to understand the message.”

Khadka’s photo, where she is showing her scars from the acid attacks while smiling at the camera, were recently making the rounds in the social media. “The reason for agreeing to do that photoshoot was because I didn’t want to stereotype myself,” she says. “And it was also to show others that we are capable of moving on in life.”

The film perfectly captures such sentiment. Agarwal, on whom the movie is based on, is also currently working as an activist and is associated with an NGO that works for the acid attack survivors. As shown in the film, Agarwal even went through a legal battle, filing a public interest litigation against the government, demanding a strong mechanism of acid’s sale in India.

Similarly, in Nepal, Sangita Magar also filed a similar PIL in 2017. As a result, the Supreme Court gave an order to the government to provide immediate financial help for the treatment of the acid attack survivors. Before this PIL was filed, the country’s law on acid and burn violence only allowed the survivors to receive compensation if the perpetrators were arrested and had sufficient economic resources.

According to the revised Criminal Code of Nepal, the attacker can be jailed for up to eight years and fined a maximum amount of Rs500,000 if the victim’s face is injured in acid or any other chemical attack. Similarly, the perpetrators can face punishment upto three years in jail and a fine of Rs300,000 if other body parts of the victim are injured. 

Even after the supreme court’s order on regulating the sale of acid in Nepal, little changes can be seen as acid is still easily available in the market. This remains as a classic example of how much of struggle and advocacy it takes for the state to bestow the rights and justice to the survivors

Screengrab via YouTube

In Chhapaak, the lead character’s journey was shown in a structured template of the regular pattern of hero’s journey—which isn’t particularly bad, but dilutes the struggles of the acid attack survivors.

The attempt of taking the sensitive issue and portraying the survivor’s story with respect and dignity, however, is a feat in itself. There have been earlier attempts of making a movie based on this very subject. Uyare, a Malayalam film and even Rekha Thapa’sRudrapriya were some of them. But these films didn’t receive as much attention as Chhapaak, mostly due to the popularity of the lead actor.

After the release of the movie, Uttarakhand state government of India even announced that it will start a scheme of providing pension for acid attack survivors of the state.

In the film, in one scene, Malti says, “Kitna acha hota agar acid bikta hi nahi, milta hi nahi to fekta hi nahi” which roughly translates to, “How nice would it be if acid was not sold, then nobody would get their hands on it and they won’t throw it on others.”

This should be a learning for the policy makers of both Nepal and India. Although the state mechanism has banned porn, which the authorities say increases violence against women, no efforts have been made to regulate and monitor the sale of acid, which has become the newest tool to propagate gender-based violence.

Chhapaak

Starring: Deepika Padukone, Vikrant Massey, Madhurjeet Sarghi