Two thumbs up
After nine years of living with a cleft lip, Bipul wasn’t going to let anything keep him from reaching Operation Smile’s medical mission in Durgapur.
Bipul’s story
After loving and raising three daughters together, Nioti and her husband, Monbula, remained hopeful that they would finally welcome a son into their family.
When Nioti gave birth to their fourth child, Bipul, during the early hours of one winter night, she and Monbula were overjoyed to see that their prayers had been answered: Their first son was born.
But instead of feeling relief and excitement on the day of Bipul’s birth, the family was overcome with great pain when they looked at their only boy and saw that he was born with a cleft lip.
Lacking access to education on the potential causes of cleft conditions, which can be environmental, hereditary or a combination of both factors, Monbula and Nioti believed that Bipul’s cleft condition was a punishment from the gods due to the influence of a lunar eclipse during her pregnancy.
While some people believed Bipul to be “polluted” because of his cleft lip, Nioti had a love for her son that outweighed everything else.
“My fate was to have this baby,” Nioti said.
Monbula and Nioti learned about the possibility of surgery on the same day that Bipul was born. And while they didn’t know what Bipul’s future held, they were confident that their son would one day receive the care they knew he needed and deserved.
And when the family learned that free surgery was possible in the nearby town of Odisha, it seemed as though that day had arrived.
But for 3-year-old Bipul, the idea of leaving home frightened him. And so his family decided not to go, resulting in Bipul having to continue living with an unrepaired cleft.
As Bipul grew older and started going to school, the teasing and name-calling he received from some of his peers became almost too much for him to bear. He would often come home crying due to the harmful abuse he endured throughout the day. In an attempt to comfort her son, Nioti would tell Bipul that he would one day receive surgery that would repair his cleft lip and change his life.
Full of courage
When Bipul was 9 years old, the surgery his mother always talked about didn’t feel too far away after Operation Smile hosted an awareness event in their village for an upcoming medical programme in Durgapur.
This time, Bipul wasn’t afraid.
He even said that, if he had to, he would travel on his own to reach the programme. As if all of the fear that once held him back had vanished, Bipul bravely made the journey with his family toward a new smile.
Operation Smile India’s ability to reach patients like Bipul is the result of the organisation’s innovative approach and ambition to improve access to safe cleft care for people living in hard-to-reach communities.
At every stage of the programme, whether it was receiving a health evaluation or waiting during patient announcement day, Bipul had a huge smile on his face as he gave two thumbs-up to anyone who passed by.
Bipul’s courage helped him not only face the unfamiliar environment of the programme, but also connect with other patients and volunteers at the hospital.
Forming strong bonds
Seven-year-old Monu – whose family also learned about the programme at the same awareness event – was one patient in particular who formed a strong bond with Bipul.
While living with a cleft condition can put a child’s life in jeopardy with an increased risk of illness and malnutrition, it can also lead to a life of loneliness and isolation due to the harmful stigmatization.
For Monu and Bipul, they’d lived five minutes away from each other their entire lives – but never met each other until that day at the programme.
Monu’s parents, Santosh and Bina, knew that their son wasn’t the only child living with a cleft condition. But as they looked around the programme site, they were shocked to see the number of families who had arrived in Durgapur seeking out safe surgical care for their children.
Playing happily together
After they passed their comprehensive health evaluations, Bipul and Monu stayed near each other throughout the programme, playing happily together in the child life area before their surgeries. Taking after his older companion, Monu also began giving a thumbs-up to the volunteers and staff members he met. Later during the programme, the Operation Smile medical team healed the smiles of the new friends, who remained close even after returning home.
Friends for life
With safe surgery from Operation Smile, a patient’s future becomes brighter. Not only does a child get the opportunity to go to school and make friends without fear of bullying, they also find the confidence to dream about what the future will hold for them after surgery.
For Bipul, it’s more than just a new smile, he’s now having speech therapy to improve his confidence even more – all part of the comprehensive care provided by Operation Smile. Both Bipul and Monu now have big plans for the future, Monu wants to become a police officer and Bipul wants to continue with his education and eventually learn to speak English.
For both children, a condition that often prevents people from building relationships ended up uniting two unlikely friends.