Scars A life full of stories

[Music]

hello

everyone so um

i hope i’m audible enough yes ma’am

so um i did hear the um other course

speakers and it was brilliant

that you’ll have a combination of so

many speakers out here

and i’m extremely humbled and very happy

to be here

it’s a nice sunday mood lift i must say

so i will not waste any more time and

i’ll just get right into the

subject which is impermanence anitya in

sanskrit

basically means not permanent so that

that means like we all are very aware of

how

um the previous speakers also mentioned

that you know life is not permanent and

everything in life is

impermanent and that’s what makes it

very very beautiful and uh

of course even i came from the same

thought process a few years ago

when i was at that age of an idol uh

indian woman getting married and i

thought i will set

my um permanent foot in a very permanent

uh setup

of what we called today as um a very

what do you call it broadly it is the uh

the timeline that is set

and uh once i have decided that

okay this is my protocol and i have to

follow it like most

um women i think in our country

i was also definitely you know in tandem

with whatever everybody was doing

and i changed my permanence in a

marriage

and uh in this whole journey

i had to endure a lot of uh mental pain

a lot of physical pain

and i didn’t know until then the

domestic violence is something that is

a real thing or even a marital rape that

is a real thing

and um of course it came as a big

shocker and

there were months or years on an end

that i did not even want to believe what

was happening simply because i thought

in the permanent idea of what a marriage

should look like and somebody is always

there to secure you

and uh it was just very beautiful moment

in this

entire stream of darkness a tunnel that

i was passing through

the light at the end of the tunnel was

when i realized i was pregnant with my

uh son i have a six and a half year old

son

and i’m a single mother very proud of it

of course

so then came a thought in my head that

in this whole permanent situation the

most impermanence was my son coming into

my life

and if he coming into my life has

changed everything for me

then definitely the best thing that can

happen to anybody i think is the

fact that impermanence in life is much

more beautiful than just simply being

permanent about anything

of course i would like to add that my

pain

my agony my anger my vendetta you know

all those

emotions which a regular human being is

bound to go through

during periods of absolute um

helplessness when you’re very despondent

and then you do not know what to do

so in these situations i did go through

a lot of every

every bit of that emotion but the

the best part that came out was

simply oh my god okay so the best part

was that

i could get rid of the pain i could

fight it out my pain was something that

vanished over a period of time like they

say time is the best healer

but the scars remained and i think

that’s the only permanent thing

your scars this is when i got an idea

um that i want to make my life very

independent of

the family and independent of the

situations

and uh hence i started my journey as a

fashion designer

um which i’m perhaps uh most prominently

known in today’s time

but uh beyond uh behind even being a

fashion designer there was a

nice story that i was extremely

intrigued by

um the weavers because my mother was

already working with a lot of viewers

over almost about two decades if nothing

less

and that’s where i’ve taken the

inspiration from and i started this

journey where i wanted to

empower the weavers and i thought

fashion industry is the best solution

because

there is visibility out there and of

course i ended up

you know getting on to something which

is considered one of the most

prestigious

platforms in the country which is uh

fashion week and of course

the amazon india fashion week and with

this

game uh success because i was only you

know on a run to

simply prove myself and prove my point

that

independently we can do much more if we

are moving away from the permanent

setting

and once i’ve reached a certain stage in

my career

then came the idea one day i was just

simply sitting and i was just giving it

a thought

and a person like me who was

blessed with good education blessed with

great family the infrastructure the

support system

if a woman like me coming from the

privileges that i’ve been blessed with

if i could go through or i had to go

through so much of pain i could only

imagine

what any average indian woman or a man

would be going through

who’s perhaps not um you know as blessed

as most of us whether it’s the education

whether it is um just the mere basics of

life and that’s when the whole idea of

her right came into my mind

so this is an organization that i’ve

created for women as well as men

especially youngsters i’d like to

encourage who

are looking to change their life so we

create sustainable businesses for

oppressed women in particular and uh

her i took up really well because i

started my uh my

pioneer project was in the special

prison

women the state of telangana what we did

over there was

again they were all also from the same

school of thought of accepting

life as it came thinking that this is

their fate and you know this is what it

is and this is how we are going to die

someday and those thoughts were

absolutely permanent and they were

etched in their

minds and of course to move them from

that permanence to an impermanence

thinking that you know life can change

things can get better

and motivating them to do so to simply

change their thought process was the

biggest challenge i faced but of course

um i think you know resilient

is something that uh would definitely

lead us to

a lot of successful parts and uh so did

it happen

um after a complete you know on and on

and on and on

perceiving them to give it at least a

basic thought

if they want to work together and there

came a point then

you know we could actually have around

50 to 60 women

who were willing to work with us and

we’ve skilled them

upscale them later we’ve started a whole

collection with them

we’ve showcased it and it was one of the

really really very well accepted

collection you know under our

work all these years and now they also

started seeing

that there is light definitely at the

end of the tunnel and

so many more women who are in prison

started uh

wanting to be on our path and these

women that i

work with particularly are lifetime

imprisoned

of course there are so many qualms about

it and it’s still a taboo

but i just chose to you know

be in a space where nobody perhaps would

consider being

and people would think that um

you know this space isn’t great to be

because it’s definitely out of your

comfort zone

and there are so many stories i have

heard you know when

i was in the prison trying to uh train

them because those stories have

definitely changed a lot for me as well

and i never uh step back before i

say this but uh these women have landed

there

because of their situations because um

of course

some definitely would have committed

what they’ve committed but they have all

come

there because there were different

scenarios in their life where which has

landed them there

and of course i’m sure every one of us

have similar situations in life where we

are

you know stuck between chapters we don’t

know you know which way to go

and uh that particular

uh movement is when i would like to

believe that everybody needs to pause

and think twice before you take a step a

lot of people

also asked me you know why her right and

you know why i have chosen to

take places where you know it’s a it’s

not a norm to go work

in setups like prisons or work with

women farmers in particular and we’ve

worked a lot more with

women rescued from human trafficking of

course and child sex abuse and

uh child trafficked uh children and

so there are a lot of these dark spaces

that i have chosen to work

not because um i felt i could uh

you know see a lot of times you know

people always

say this and i’m not going to lecture

about the same thing again saying look

at somebody they are

you know we are much more privileged

than them of course we are there is no

doubt that we have to count our

blessings but i wanted to simply be

there because nobody else wants to be

there that was the only

reason why i chose to be where i did and

uh you know simple example that i would

like to quote here is

it’s like stagnant water i think

permanence is like stagnant water

it’s very calm it’s very poised and

composed beautiful it’s very serene for

an outsider

but only stagnant water breeds

mosquitoes and diseases

so i think we love reverse because

it’s flowing water it’s always active

it’s always changing

and that’s the water that actually helps

with um any sort of prosperity

so i think anything which is stagnant is

definitely not very healthy that’s what

i would like to believe

and so many people multiple times have

always asked

me that you know why do you keep doing

so many things like you’ve never stuck

to one thing like you always

uh bringing new things into play and

you’re always

up to something or the other you want to

try different arenas and

i believe life is one and uh it changes

definitely every day

and um since we are anyways discussing

impermanence

if life itself is not permanent why

should we stick to one

this is my thought process a lot of