Lali Rest In Peace

Girl With Two Faces: Nat Geo channel’s show about birth of a baby.

Camera starts: March 2008, birth of baby with rather unusual features which doctors named as craniofacial duplication, the baby was born with two faces, two pair of nose, two pair of eyes, two pair of lips and one pair of ears. The Nat Geo story was about how oddly birth and death are seen in a nation where majority of people’s lives in superstitions. The baby was born with good health in a “lower caste” (as termed by NGC) family, the mom and baby were healthy after birth, in-fact the baby weighed 4.5 Kg’s.

Near by villager’s starts flooding there to see the new infant, the baby was called as incarnation of Lakshmi and Ganesha. Peoples start offering fruits and flowers and money in front of the new born. The parents were even perplexed, they can’t even think of it’s a curse or a boon. They can’t decide on what next.

The camera rolls on; a doctor from Bangalore, Ashley Cruz comes in screen for studying the conditions of the baby. The doctor entreats for giving the child medical help. The health of the baby goes worse, the childish beauty starts fading, she losses weight and high dehydration losses the softness of baby, she turns like a weak skeleton. The show project inabilities of parents what to decide. They call village head and some elder men to decide on whether to give medial aid; all stuck up with the traditional ways of solving issues. Dr Cruz had doubts about anatomy of the child; he fears that the one of the mouth is leading to stomach and other leads to lungs. Flow of solid or liquid food may result in serious lung infections; his arguments don’t make any impact on parents. Even though scared about Lali’s health they can’t decided on things fearing the anarchies of family and community.

Finally, after declining all medical aid at the need time the baby gets admitted. It was too late to help the baby; the baby dies of pneumonia and blood poisoning. Lali turned out to be a victim of poverty, caste separation, anarchy, superstitions and inabilities of a community to put faith in science. The show ends with a comment from Dr. Cruz “it’s a precious life lost.”

The baby was given a eventful burial, the most eventful ceremony the villagers ever saw. After six months they build a temple for Lali, peoples are worshiping poverty, apathies, ignorance, anarchies and inabilities.

The biggest irony is that after a week, I read from Obama full text speech

“Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse. Meanwhile, China’s not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany’s not waiting. India’s not waiting, These nations aren’t standing still. These nations aren’t playing for second place. They’re putting more emphasis on maths and science. They’re rebuilding their infrastructure.”

Is India putting more “emphasis on maths and science” ?