It was in the plains of the Bihar-Nepal border that Lakshmi was born on Diwali day, three years ago. People saw her four arms and looked upon her as an incarnation of the goddess of wealth worshipped during Diwali -- Lakshmi. That's how she got her name and that is why Diwali was chosen as the day for her rare and critical surgery in Bangalore.
Her headless identical twin was joined to her pelvis. Unable to find a cure, earlier, the poor family had borrowed money and brought her to Delhi where Poonam's brother worked as a mason. They went to a hospital in Shahadra where the doctors told them they were unable to treat her.
In Delhi, Sam Relph a British journalist, wrote about them after seeing a photograph of Lakshmi in a newspaper. He contacted Sneh Gupta, the filmmaker involved with the SKSN school in Manaklao, Jodhpur, who garnered support for Lakshmi and documented her journey to recovery.
She arranged for Dr Sharan Patil, an orthopaedic surgeon at Bangalore's Sparsh Hospital, to travel with the crew to examine Lakshmi in the village. The family then arrived in Bangalore for the surgery, which was done free of cost by Sparsh Hospital, while Channel 4 paid for all the additional expense of travel, stay etc.
"We were strangers, what worried the parents was -- what if we kidnapped Nunu," says Sneh in her home office in New Delhi. "It was a huge responsibility for me but the thought that this was possible, gave me the courage to go on."
Image: Lakshmi will undergo two more surgeries this year that will close her pelvic floor and remove a piece of the spine of her parasitic twin that is fused with her spine.
Also see: Lakshmi's rare surgery
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