RIP sweet child

A moving documentary about a baby with "two faces".

You need a heart of steel to watch India, National Geographic Channel’s new offering. Though the first episode — which I missed — went on air last Friday, I watched a forthcoming episode, in advance, thanks to the channel which gave me its DVD.

There’s no easy way of describing the episode which revolved around a baby girl who was born — in abject poverty, to make things worse — with congenital malformation. Just a few miles away from Delhi, in a village in Uttar Pradesh, this baby girl was born with two faces. But what National Geographic Channel captured remarkably in this documentary, which will go on air on September 29, 2009 at 9 pm, was not just the baby’s malfunction. It also encapsulated the weakness of our system, our society, tottering religious beliefs, banal superstitions, lack of education and, subsequently, lack of complete faith in modern science, empty indulgences for what they believe is god — or goddess, in this case — and so much more.

The “weakness” came out in the open in my own home, in front of my own eyes, this morning, even as I watched the DVD with growing unease while my staff mopped and cleaned the house. “Ye doh mooh ki hai (She has two faces?)” wondered one of them in horror. He thought the baby was a “miracle”, a miracle that medical science needn’t address but a miracle that should be worshiped.

Like him, many in the documentary, including the little baby’s own parents, thought she was an incarnation of the mother goddess. For a family that belonged to what others in the village called the “lowest class”, it was a strange but an extraordinary feeling for the family to have the entire village prostrate before the baby who weighed a healthy 4.8 kg at the time of birth. For a family of four generations living together in a tiny house, a family which was refused entry to the local temple, it was, indeed, sweet revenge to have everyone flocking to their humble home and paying obeisance to their little angel.

But what was certainly a deadly combination, poverty and lack of education, and from which continue to stem other critical issues, one can — and I hate saying this — understand, in a way, why little Lali was never taken to any hospital after she was born. Every morning, people in the surrounding areas, you see, were leaving money after bowing down to touch little Lali’s weak limbs to seek her blessings. It was money that the family needed for its day-to-day needs; to feed the many mouths that were increasing with alarming alacrity in the household. Photos were clicked, prayers were whispered in her ears but ironically little Lali, despite all the attention that she grabbed, was in desperate need of “serious” attention.

Dr Ashley Cruz of Narayana Hospital, Bangalore, on learning about the girl through local reports, did meet the parents, hoping to persuade them to bring the little one for medical treatment. But because such matters involve the consent of elders, the village headman and others — never mind all the precious time that was lost — no consensus was reached. While, on the one hand, little Lali’s deterioration is captured by the cameras, it’s also the growing bond between her parents and Lali’s uncle that the docu brings across beautifully.

Despite the negligence in rushing Lali (heartbreakingly frail in the last segment) to the hospital, you cry along with the parents who lose their “miracle” baby after she dies of a massive heart attack. It’s a story that moves you to tears, leaves a lump in your throat and makes you wish you were there to save the baby somehow.

It’s a story that forces you to sit back and think of why we allow children to die. “In any other part of the world, the baby would be taken to the best centres and given world-class treatment. Here, we need to go and persuade the parents to save their own child. In the end,” continues Dr Cruz, “it’s a precious life lost.”

Very sadly, Lali died a slow, painful death. I’m sorry we let you die, little one. Rest in peace.