Jhuma

Jhuma and her grandmother, Sonoka

Jhuma was born with a cleft lip to poor rice farmers for whom reconstructive surgery was out of the question.

For 13 years, she lived with shame and humiliation as other children teased her cruelly. Every day she’d go home crying. She felt ugly, and dreamed of someday getting surgery to fix her torn lip.

Then Operation Smile sent a medical mission to the nearby town of Bolpur in September 2005. Jhuma went there with her grandmother, Sonoka, also born with a cleft lip. But they were turned away.

The following year, however, both Jhuma and her grandmother got free surgeries and new smiles. In the same day, their lives were changed forever.

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