A gritty mom who battled social odds to become India's first

She is not only a mother, but a gritty woman who pulled out all stops to become the countrys first female bone marrow donor to give new lease of life to an ailing three-month-old infant.

It took a lot of courage for the 26-year-old Masilamani, hailing from a nondescript village of Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, to come out and donate her bone marrow to save a baby from New Delhi.

Masilamani, the mother of a thalassemia major girl, was in the city on a personal visit.

She is ecstatic at what she has achieved recently.

"I believe Im blessed. I managed to break away from the misconceptions of our society to save a child. I feel like I am the mother of the child. I would say it is my child too as now I have given him a second chance to live. I pray to the almighty that he must recover fast and should never suffer again. He must be healthy," Masilamani told PTI.

Talking about her fight against social myths when she decided to go ahead with the bone marrow donation, Masilamani recalls, "My village is a very remote one at the foot of the Velliangiri hills with very less exposure to any modern amenities. There are very few educated people there. Therefore, anything new, be it a thing or a thought, is always resisted in the village."
"Within a year, my daughter was born and a few months later she was diagnosed with thalassemia major. We both (husband and wife) have our swabs to identify human leukocyte antigen (HLA) to check if we could be of any match to our daughter at DATRI - the blood stem cells donor registry. There I found a match to become a donor for a baby boy."
But we could not take a decision so easily. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law resisted saying if something went wrong, who will take care of your children?