This picture was taken 29th of November, 2004. My friend Abdul Jabbar who runs an NGO for the betterment of the survivor's affected in the Bhopal Gas tragedy which claimed thousands of lives in 1984, said that one survivor needed urgent help and only the media can do that for her. Jabbar who knew I was working with Hindustan Times and also feeding images for the AFP requested me to come since most of the other local journalist and photographers in Bhopal had refused to help him in his struggle.
He had told me how this 40 year old Gazalla (then 36) had to fight with a lot of red tape to get her treatment done free of cost from the Madhya Pradesh Government. This made an interesting story and so I requested Jabbar to take me to her home. Once inside I found that she had lost her eyesight and also was paralytic on one side due the side effects caused by the Union Carbide pesticide plant's gas leak. Then to my luck I saw an old black & white picture of a very pretty girl in her teens and asked her father 'who is this good looking girl', he smiled and told me that it is Gazalla herself when she was 16 years old. Immediately I asked for the picture to be cleaned up an asked Gazalla to hold it next her present state of face.
I came back to the office and filed this picture along with an story caption for Hindustan Times - Bhopal edition and also send a few images to AFP. The picture was given three column space in the Bhopal live pages. The Next morning to my suprise I was getting calls from various newspapers, magazines and TV Correspondents from across the country asking me for the address of Gazalla . Later that day I got to know from my friend Jabbar that, Gazalla's home was flooded with TV crews from across the country and senior correspondents from various leading newspapers. Well I felt happy that I was able to do something worth for an lady who required help. As for Gazalla herself, after a hectic day called me up and thanked me for all the help I had done for her and her family.
Later in 2005 I entered this image for an World Health Organization photo competition and to my surprise it got awarded and was put on display at the Annual World Health Conference held in Switzerland as one of the 10 best photographs from around the world in the theme 'Health & Disability'.
The WHO officials later the same year send three sets of Postal cards with my picture on it and told me that they had made world wide release of these post cards. This award is more precious to me than any of my previous International awards which I had received so far.
36 year old Gazalla a Muslim girl who was blinded by the Bhopal gas tragedy shows an old photo of herself 20 years ago in this picture taken at her home on November 29th 2004.
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