Day Six: Reshma.

Today I had the opportunity to visit Reshma with two other students. Reshma is a young lady who suffered extreme burns, and has been at the CRHP hospital for over a year - as her skin is just not healing. I don't want to be a misery tourist, but the burns were absolutely brutal and still weeping after so much time. I will never forget how much visible pain she wore. I'm glad I had the opportunity to spend some time with her, as I didn't want her to be just 'some story' and she was often being referred to just as 'the burns lady'. I wanted to put a face to a name, not only out of respect, but in the hope that visiting might bring some joy to her day. In fact she is incredibly intelligent and has already learnt a lot of English - we were able to spend almost an hour talking and drawing with her, and showing her pictures from home. She wrote our names in Marathi for us too! She also has a great sense of humour :) and showed us a toy kangaroo somebody had given her, that she had named Toni, and got him to do a little dance for us and even put his hands together to greet us with a "Namaste".

I just wanted to mention this, as it really reminded me of the potential within each individual person.

But it was also a strong reminder of the inequality and injustice that still goes on in many parts of India, not merely in cases of brideburning, but pervasive through the entire lives of these women.