goddess gracious.

November 6, 2007 5:04 AM

lakshmi meet lakshmi.
posted by gman (15 comments total)

If NPR has any sense, Lakshmi Singh is on a plane even as we speak.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:12 AM on November 6, 2007 [3 favorites]

hmph I would have called her the amazing octopus girl.
posted by leibniz at 5:42 AM on November 6, 2007

It makes me wonder about all of those multi-limbed Hindu Gods & Goddesses. How many were based on medical anomolies such as these? And don't even get me started on the monkey God Hanuman.

For a modern take on one of the great stories in the Hindu tradition (The Ramayan), see "Sita Sings the Blues"
posted by SPUTNIK at 5:54 AM on November 6, 2007

This article shows an x-ray of her skeleton, which helped me understand her bone structure. It also mentions the appalling fact that a circus tried to buy her as a freak show.
posted by bassjump at 5:54 AM on November 6, 2007

Here was me thinking this was a post about Diwali, which is going on right about now.

Good luck to the little girl.
posted by Sk4n at 5:57 AM on November 6, 2007

She's a cutie and her parents look pretty happy.

Which actually leads to a pet peeve of my wife's that has crept into my own mind. New parents (or those congratulating them) often say "As long as she has 10 fingers and toes, we'll be happy". Pretty offensive, if you think about it.
posted by DU at 6:34 AM on November 6, 2007

meet lakshmi. Who turns out to be rather aptly named, apparently.
posted by cogneuro at 7:13 AM on November 6, 2007

In other tragic news, Nancy Grace gives birth to twins.
posted by phaedon at 7:47 AM on November 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

This story has been all over every news site for the last couple of days (speaking of which, this is pretty newsfiltery), but the most interesting thing to me is how damn happy she looks in every one of the now dozen or so pics I've seen. I love that.
posted by rokusan at 8:55 AM on November 6, 2007

Sounds like the surgery will cost an arm and a leg.
posted by brain_drain at 10:17 AM on November 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter, meet Fark.
posted by UbuRoivas at 12:08 PM on November 6, 2007

(no, seriously. i hadn't seen this anywhere else, and as a bit of an indiaphile, i am curious to know how it's going down over there. for a start, there are tons of people named after gods & goddesses, just as people in the west are often named after biblical characters, but the Lakshmi name cannot possibly have been a coincidence. india's also the kind of place where a portion of the population would probably be treating this girl as an actual avatar of the goddess & resisting any thought of corrective surgery)
posted by UbuRoivas at 12:11 PM on November 6, 2007

How many were based on medical anomolies such as these?

I cast my vote for none. There is a lot of reason and tradition supporting the way these deities are portrayed, and every single physical attribute has important symbolic meaning. They are the culminations of countless visions, storytelling, and imagination.

Also, if children being born like this is rare now, imagine hundreds or thousands of years ago when an anomaly such as this would have been more likely to be fatal to either mother or child.
posted by hermitosis at 3:10 PM on November 6, 2007

I'd be more impressed if more surgeons treated for free the common, curable things that kill so many in the developing world, day in & day out, instead of just these high-profile, freak of nature cases.
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:43 PM on November 6, 2007

UbuRoivas: there are some committed physicians' groups like Jan Swasthya Sahyog that are working to not just bring healthcare to the poor, but also to train them in procedures like drawing blood. They work in Bihar/Chhatisgarh, one of the poorest and most depressed parts of India.
posted by phliar at 6:02 PM on November 6, 2007