The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Kapila's heart doesn't miss the beat now

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 03, 2005

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Kapila's heart doesn't miss the beat now

Dennis Marcus Mathew

FUTURE LOOKS BRIGHT: Jai Shankar with his daughter Kapila at Care Hospital in Hyderabad on Wednesday. - Photo: P.V. Sivakumar

HYDERABAD: She was born with a hole in her heart. A hole that burned more holes into her father's already empty pocket.

And on December 26, when tsunami swept away in its wake several of her hale and hearty friends, Kapila, 11, asked God: "Why did you leave me behind?"

Now, recuperating after a complex open-heart surgery last Friday at Care Hospital here, Kapila and her father Jai Shankar, a farmer from Kumaragudi village of Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu, firmly believe that Kapila escaped tsunami because she was destined to live longer.

"When several able-bodied children in our village were taken away by tsunami, I wondered why my daughter was left behind to suffer. For the last eight years, doctors at a Government hospital in Chidambaram did nothing but give medicines which cost me Rs.25,000, but could not heal her. They told me that it would cost Rs.2 lakhs if she had to live longer," Jai Shankar said.

That was when a village elder suggested me to meet President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who was touring tsunami-ravaged villages in Tamil Nadu.

The meeting did not materialise, but Shankar sensed hope and wrote a letter to Rashtrapati Bhavan detailing his daughter's misery.

`Moving' letter

"The letter was really touching. The President asked us to make arrangements to send Shankar and his daughter to Hyderabad where she would be treated. We also made sure that they were taken care of in the city, because being from a seaside village, it was sure that they would be overawed by the big buildings," J. Radhakrishna, Additional Private Secretary to Dr. Kalam, told The Hindu over phone.

Now, after a month in the hospital, the girl is ready to go back to Kumaragudi. "She could have returned earlier. But because the surgery was delayed for years due to their financial condition, post-operative recovery took a little longer," doctors said, adding that with Kapila the number of patients registered with the Little Hearts Care Foundation for cardiac care reached 1,710.

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