Something to Smile About
By pm317 on March 8, 2009 at 3:25 PM in Current Affairs
(Editor’s Note: Below the fold, you’ll find a CNN video and two terrific, professionally-produced videos from the documentary film about this important story.)
This wonderful story got lost in all the Slumdog hoopla. The real life fairytale involves a little girl in rural India rescued by philanthropists from being a social outcast all her life. A society that craves perfection and penalizes any little defect had made her a social outcast because of her cleft lip that deformed her face. But now thanks to the philanthropy of Smile Train project and a doctor in Varanasi, India, the little girl no longer ostracized has something to smile about.
She’s not as famous as the child actors of “Slumdog Millionaire,” but Pinki Sonkar is a legend in the Indian village that once ostracized her, thanks to cleft-lip surgery and another Oscar-winning film.
Pinki, believed to be about 6 years old, is the star of the short documentary “Smile Pinki,” which won an Academy Award for telling her story. …
The 39-minute poignant film, by U.S.-based filmmaker Megan Mylan, recounts how the girl, born into a poor family and with a cleft lip, is taken by a social worker to a hospital that provides free surgery to fix the deformity for thousands of children each year. [snip]
Subodh Kumar Singh, the plastic surgeon who corrected Pinki’s cleft lip and accompanied her to Los Angeles, said he hoped the film will increase awareness about the condition which carries a social stigma in parts of rural India.
Singh, who treated Pinki for free, said he has performed 13,000 corrective surgeries at his hospital in Varanasi since 2005 with the help of the U.S.-based charity Smile Train, which aids cleft lip surgery.
“There are 160 Smile Train hospitals all across India but this hospital alone has conducted the maximum number of surgeries in the world,” he explained.
The hut where Pinki has lived her whole life does not have electricity, but villagers organized a generator to light up its mud walls when she returned.
With Singh by her side, shying away from the many cameras and reluctant to talk to reporters, Pinki’s eyes searched the crowd for someone she had not seen for a long time.
A moment later, mother and daughter were reunited and Pinki flashed her now famous smile.
The hospital where the surgery was performed celebrated its own triumph:
For the doctors and staff at Varanasi’s GS Memorial Plastic Surgery Hospital and Trauma Centre, the news of Megan Mylan’s short documentary Smile Pinki winning an Oscar was special. For, it was here that 11-year-old Pinky’s cleft lip was reconstructed, restoring her smile.
So the hospital decided to celebrate Pinky’s — and its own — triumph in a special way today: surgeries were carried out on an unusually large number of children — 22. All these children, born with cleft lips, will now smile like the protagonist of Mylan’s film.
CNN’s Sara Sidner has the video:
Brian Mullaney, a Long Island native and a former advertising executive, is the founder of the charity Smile Train. He has a staff of about 40 people doing work in 76 of the world’s poorest countries, the NY Daily News says. About the Oscars, Mullaney had this to say:
“Every Oscar changes a career — ‘Smile Pinki’s’ Oscar will hopefully change the lives of millions of children,” says Mullaney.
“Pinki’s surgery cost less than the shoes on some of her fellow nominees on the red carpet.”
[Pinki Sonkar with Megan Mylan at the Oscars]
The surgery costs as little as $250.
In the end what caught my eyes in the Reuters article are these lines:
“Yes, the village is very proud of her,” Pinki’s father, Rajendra Sonkar said at a press conference in New Delhi after he and his daughter returned to India from Los Angeles after last week’s Oscar ceremony.
“I want her to become a doctor when she grows up so she can help other children with the same problem.”
Let us hope his dream comes true.
Here is the Documentary Trailer :
Follow this link to the same video on YouTube and be sure to read about the Smile Train Charity on the sidebar.
Bonus Video: Interview with the Field Producer of the film, Nandini Rajwade on an Indian News Show
, the basis for the Best Motion Picture Nominee (Golden Globes) starring Brad Pitt.
, the novel by John Le Carre, a new motion picture starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.
by 
* (Included in the 
* 
.by David Fredosso who wrote 2008's 
- You'll have access to 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books, as well as ultra-fast Web browsing with Amazon Silk -- faster than iPad. Full e-mail and document access and a keyboard. Fire can transmit what is on your screen onto a connected TV or monitor without an accessory. It runs Flash (iPad doesn't). 
