Durga returns?

When Vinod Singh and his wife learned of her pregnancy, they could never have guessed she would give birth to what the people of the Indian village, Saini Sunpura, believe to be the reincarnation of the Hindu goddess of valor, Durga. Their daughter, Lali, has an extremely rare condition in which a single head has two faces. Known as craniofacial duplication, this unusual deformity causes the child to have two of everything except ears: two noses, two pairs of eyes, two sets of lips. Her parents report she is drinking milk from both mouths and is opening and closing all four eyes at once. As fascinating as this condition is and the possibilities and questions it creates in the mind, the aspect of the story I find most interesting is the reaction by the villagers, who visit her home every day hoping to touch her feet out of respect and get blessings, leaving her money. A member of the local village council, Jaipal Singh, says, "Lali is God's gift to us. She has brought fame to our village." Often this condition is associated with many serious health complications, but by all reports Lali is healthy. The cultural differences are mind-boggling! Lali is lucky to have been born in India, b/c in the US she would never be accepted. Here we seem to worship beauty above all else, and having two faces just isn't very beautiful by American standards. Yet the simple fact that she was born in a Hindu nation will remove the inevitable stigma of deformity and replace it with reverence and respect. Amazing!