Our Top Story: Girl with four eyes, two mouths and two noses born in Nepal
By Mike Ervin
The Nepal daily newspaper Kantipur reported that this child was born June 10 in the Saptari district of eastern Nepal. She supposedly could see with all four eyes and suck with both mouths.
The news caused a huge uproar in the community and people rushed to the family's house "from far and wide."
This conjures images of Frankenstein villagers, an angry mob with torches headed to burn down the home of the monster. But actually this crowd was coming to worship. They believed the baby to be the incarnation of Bhagawati, the multi-limbed Hindu goddess.
Hindus seem to have a thing for deities with extra body parts. Vishnu himself, the big daddy, has four arms. It makes sense too. Arms, legs, eyes, ears are all good things, right? If a baby is born without these components we think it's a great tragedy. So it follows that having an abundance should give one an exalted status. Three legs should better than two and 10 should be better than three. How can you have too much of a good thing?
But it doesn't work that way in our advanced Judeo Christian western culture. Turn a guy with 10 legs loose on an American street and watch the pedestrians scatter like cock roaches in a spotlight. Nope, you'd better have the exact standard allotment of properly working body parts or you're a freak. No more and no less. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
It's not just the Bible and Madison Avenue that make disability look like a pitiable tragedy. It's a grand cultural tradition all over the world. In his great book Nothing About Us Without Us, Jim Charlton tells of the creation myth of the Yoruba culture in Nigeria. It says that Obatala made humans out of clay. But whereas the Christian God rested on the seventh day, Obatala got drunk on his day off . And then he went and did something stupid, as people who get drunk on their day off often do. He tried to do more creating in his impaired state and this was the day he made "albinos, cripples and blind people."
So the baby girl was quite fortunate to have been born in a land where disability consciousness has evolved to a higher state. Unfortunately, Kantipur reported three days later that she developed breathing difficulties and died. Her reign was short but sweet.
