Written by Aarav Mehta, Grade 11
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Chhanv Foundation, which supports the rehabilitation of acid attack survivors, had approached me about organising a wedding for an acid attack survivor. I thought I knew what the job was. I had already been building WedPlan, a platform that helps wedding planners keep budgets, vendors and timelines in one place, so I was used to seeing weddings as systems of schedules, spreadsheets and moving parts.
Then I started talking to survivors and people who work with them, and logistics stopped being the part that used to interest me. They described being judged by their faces before anyone asked about their studies, their work or their plans. That judgement followed them into classrooms, offices and social life. It also followed them into the question of whether anyone would want to marry them. I could help create one happy day. But I kept wondering why a day like that was treated as exceptional in the first place.
The answer I feel lies partly in what we see around us every day. During an internship at a fashion company, I witnessed how much work goes into a single campaign. A film or an image does more than sell a product. It quietly teaches people what is attractive and who counts as worth looking at. In my IB English class, we had been studying how stories can reinforce a belief or unsettle it. The two ideas collided in my head. If advertising can redefine beauty to sell products, it can also redefine beauty to build empathy.
That thought became Second Innings, and its first campaign, Love Sees More Than a Face. I made it with acid attack survivors, Chhanv Foundation, and two Jaipur brands, Zari Jaipur and Jaipur Ratna. The women were styled for a catalogue shoot, the kind of setting where narrow standards of beauty usually live. Then each of them was asked what love meant to her.
None of them talked about how anyone looked. They talked about trust, care, companionship, respect and being accepted without conditions. The visuals draw you into a world governed by appearance, and the words ask you to look past it. I did not want viewers to meet these women as symbols of tragedy. I wanted them to meet people with humour, ambition and opinions.
I used the access I have to brands, advertising and digital platforms so that they could present themselves the way they wanted. That is also why I care about the difference between sympathy and dignity. Sympathy still leaves the viewer standing above the person, looking down at what happened to them, dignity lets them be a whole person.
Fairness mattered to me as much as the message. I raised more than ₹2.5 lakh in corporate social responsibility funding, and every survivor who took part received USD 150. I did not want anyone giving their face and their words in exchange for exposure. Their contribution was creative work, and it should be paid like every other job.
The film reached more than 40,000 viewers through partner platforms. I am glad of that number, but I know it is not the real measure. I cannot count how many people reconsidered an unconscious bias after watching, or how many families rethought what they say about a prospective bride. One of the participants has since married. That story belongs to her, and she alone decides how, or whether, it is told.
I chose the name Second Innings on purpose. The second innings does not erase the first. It simply means the first one does not get to decide everything that comes after. Many communities are stuck in a single stereotype or a single moment of exclusion, and I want this platform to help them step out of it.
My next project is with the Kalbelia community of Rajasthan, whose folk songs and dances are on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. I want to work with community members and brands to celebrate their knowledge and legacy, and to ask who gets to control an image and whose identity gets recognised.
One campaign will not undo generations of patriarchy, and I don't pretend otherwise. But norms are held up by the images and stories we see over and over. If those change, the beliefs under them have a chance to change too.
