"Smile Pinki"

Smile pinki an Oscar winning Documentary film( Running time 39 minutes) is truly a richly deserving tale to watch. It will surely make you look for a hanky to wipe those beautiful tears of joy!!

Its a story about a wonderful organisation "Smile train" which has been doing remarkable work by helping children with Cleft lip and cleft Plate. Frankly i dint have any idea what this defect was?? But thanks to the movie i have got to know about it, exact defination of this according to

the website www.smiletrain.org is:-

A cleft is a birth defect and often the #1 birth defect in most developing countries. A cleft lip is an opening in the upper lip between a newborn's mouth and nose. A cleft palate is created when the roof of the mouth has a hole in it. Babies can be born with a cleft lip or palate or both.

These defects are mostly found in children in poor countries i.e developing countries,the main reason why this abnormal condition arises is because of the malnutrition of pregnant women and poor families and sometimes because of genetic reasons!!

What's amazing is the cure for it, its a surgery of 45 minutes and which costs 250$ roughly Rs 15000 and this surgery is performed free by the organisation with the help of their trained doctors!!

For a poor family who are not sure from where their next meal would come!! 11k is a huge amount and one such family is pinki's. They had to walk 3hrs to get to a nearby village for a transport to Banaras where the hospital was organising the mega treatment.

This is the state of our country which is proud of itself for having many billionares in top 100 list, as rightly put by a american volunteer of smile train organisation " India is a very complicated country" Don't we know that??

But cant we do something to contribute??

If we cannot come forward and take the initiative then atleast we can be a small part of an organisation and help in whatever little way we can!!

There used to be a foreward in our NCERT textbooks by Mahatma Gandhi which said

" Before doing any work think in what way it will help the downtrodden people of our country" It dint made any sense in school days but those were the words of a person who had seen the plight of the poor india, Remember even he was a common man just like one of us but after realising what a mess our country was in, he became what we know him as "Bapu".

We might never achieve such heights but we should not live in ignorance, knowing the plight of millions of poor people of our country we should contribute in whatever way we can!!

We eat Junk food, spend on parties,Movies and what not!! If every individual contributes then we can a bring about a change!!

Firstly the important factor is we shouldn't live in ignorance, smile pinki was one example which made me realise my responsibility. As such there are many more examples and millions of people who are in ignorance, we should spread the awareness!!!

Bring a smile and see the difference!!

Aditya