How Lakshmi dodged death and was reborn

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How Lakshmi dodged death and was reborn

Livemint.com

Dec. 31, 2007

 

by Mrinal Pande

 

In most states in India, the tears and mournful shaking

of heads that follow the birth of a girl child are the

infant's first awareness of her lesser worth to her family

and her inferior status as a human being. The rich ones,

UNDP reports confirm, are (illegally) aborting their

unwanted female foetuses. But if the family is poor and

illiterate, the mothers will just weep, the grandmothers

will blame the evil stars, the men mutter curses and look

away.

 

Since the poor must often make impossible choices, the

denial of vital nutrition and attention will follow the

unwanted girl child, guaranteeing that she succumbs to

some infection soon. Then a collective sigh of relief will

be heaved and those who come to console the parents

will say, such was His will. Under such circumstances,

the birth and the survival of Lakshmi is a little miracle.

 

Most of us got to know about Lakshmi, a little deformed

girl born in Bihar, only when doctors at the Sparsh

hospital in faraway Bangalore offered to operate on her

and make her normal. Lakshmi, we learnt, belonged to a

very poor family of Rampur Kodarkatti village in Araria

district. She was born in her maternal grandmother's

house in Kaatakos village on Diwali, the festival of

lights, during which Lakshmi, the multi-armed goddess

of wealth, is said to visit the earth.

 

One look at the girl child with four legs and arms

splayed in all directions and the grandmother decided to

cast her out to die. But when she was carrying the

newborn out, a woman she met on the road said to her,

" Why are you throwing away the Lakshmi that has come

to your house? " At this, the superstitious grandmother

changed her mind and brought the baby back. The child

was then named Lakshmi and sent back to her father's

village.

 

When the infant arrived with her mother and paternal

grandmother Rukmini Devi, the entire village is said to

have turned up for a darshan of the " goddess " . Since

then, a steady stream of visitors from other villages has

poured into the house. The almost uniformly poor

visitors wished to see the holy child, believing her to be

an incarnation of Lakshmi, and seek her blessings. Since

the visitors also brought welcome gifts of food and cash

for the " goddess " , Lakshmi's family began to live a little

better. This further convinced the superstitious villagers

that the child was indeed special.

 

Rampur Kodarkatti village, where Lakshmi's parents

live, is a stone's throw away from the district

headquarters at Araria. When word about the little

goddess with a strange body reached the town,

journalists and TV cameras also arrived on the scene,

followed by foreign film-makers, ever on the lookout for

a sensational tale out of the mystical Orient. The village,

which by now had come to be known as " Lakshmi

village " , began to prosper even more.

 

This was when the doctors in Bangalore heard about the

baby and offered to operate upon her and separate what

they diagnosed as the undeveloped body of an unborn

fraternal twin that had somehow got fused with hers.

Initially, village sarpanch Rajesh Singh, who helped get

Lakshmi to Bangalore, was opposed by both the

villagers and Lakshmi's family. They were unwilling to

let modern medicine interfere with what they said was a

gift and a miracle. They tried to block the move as much

as they could, citing first the distance between their

village and Bangalore, then the parents' inability to pay

for the costly surgery. With the sarpanch interceding on

her behalf, the hospital agreed to waive the charges.

Finally, Lakshmi was taken to Bangalore and

successfully operated upon by a team of doctors. She is

now recouping at a rehabilitation centre at Jodhpur.

 

Back at her village, meanwhile, the family has begun

building a temple for Lakshmi, with the infant's uncle,

Indradeo Tatma, even making a statue. The villagers are

planning a lavish eight-day installation ceremony after

their goddess returns in her new incarnation as a normal

girl.

 

Our mainstream [indian] media has so far been content

to present occasional interviews with Lakshmi's doctors

and attendant therapists. After the child was discharged,

they appear to have lost interest, but television channels

continue to churn out programmes featuring astrologers,

tantriks and freaky tales about mating cobras being

interrupted and stalking their torturers for years, haunted

havelis and babas who cure people by beating them with

nutcrackers or brooms.

 

In a real sense, Lakshmi's birth was an artificial creation

of a rare situation in which the body of an unborn twin

got fused with the living infan, creating a child with

multiple limbs and deformities. But once the child is

brought on the path to normalcy after the complicated

surgery, for her family to seek to rebrand her as an

exceptional and awesome being seems not just bizarre

but also dangerous. A divine status and temple may

guarantee Lakshmi's village and family a steady

income, but it can also play havoc with Lakshmi's life.

 

We must at this point ask the media why they aren't

taking this issue seriously. Must we wait till a girl is

burnt on a pyre, like Roop Kanwar, [Roop Kanwar was

a childless 18-year old Rajput widow who committed

sati on 4 September 1987] before we protest against the

erection of a temple in her name?

 

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