The Better India · 4 hours ago

Pune Teen Creates ‘the Glow Guide’ for Burn and Acid Attack Survivors’ Recovery

When sixteen-year-old Sia Domkundwar began speaking with burn and acid attack survivors, she expected to hear about surgeries and scars - instead, she heard about sunlight, and fabric that hurt, and not knowing which creams were safe. What she discovered was a quiet gap that medicine alone cannot close: the space between leaving the hospital and learning, again, how to live in one's own body. Her response was The Glow Guide, a 60-page, trauma-informed resource covering everything from skincare and clothing to nutrition and cosmetics, now being shared with hospitals across India. Survivor Anshu, who spent years navigating recovery without guidance, put it plainly: "Apart from the doctor, there was no one to guide us." The guide's deeper gift, as one survivor told Sia, was that it helped her think "not about what to remove from her life, but what to add" - a small but telling measure of what it means to move from surviving toward reclaiming.