Ruhi arrived on a quiet morning in a small village in North 24 Pargana, West Bengal, when the air was still cool, and the world felt unhurried. She was the second daughter in a humble home, and her parents had walked into that day carrying the memory of their first child’s easy birth. They expected the same gentle beginning.
But when Ruhi was placed in her mother’s arms, the room changed. The joy that had been rising like a song caught in the throat. Faces tightened, voices softened, and in the space between one heartbeat and the next, her parents realised something was not as they had imagined. Ruhi had been born with a cleft lip and palate.
They didn’t have words for it. They had never seen anything like this in their family, in their neighbourhood, in their lives. Questions rushed in all at once –
Will she survive?
Will she ever be able to eat properly?
Will she live a normal life?
Each question felt heavier than the last. With no answers to hold onto, both mother and father broke down, caught between love for their newborn and the helplessness of not knowing how to protect her.
Doctors and nurses where Ruhi was born, they tried to steady them. They spoke about the treatment, about surgeries, spread across time and assured them that Ruhi’s condition was treatable. Yet those words, however kind, felt impossibly far away. Ruhi’s father was a daily-wage labourer at a local tiles workshop, counting every rupee. Her mother had rarely stepped beyond the boundaries of her home. In their world, “multiple surgeries” sounded like a distant city they could never reach.
Where would they go?
How would they afford it?
Days went by in a restless blur, feeding worries, sleepless nights, and whispered conversations that always ended the same way: with fear. And then, quietly, hope arrived not as a miracle, but as a human hand reaching out.
EBMA Foundation community volunteers connected with the family and introduced them to the EBMA Foundation’s programme team. Soon after, the EBMA Foundation team came to their modest home. They didn’t arrive with just pamphlets or instructions; they brought calm, clarity, and the feeling that Ruhi’s parents did not have to carry this alone.
They sat with Ruhi’s mother and, step by step, showed her how to feed her baby safely, how to angle her gently, how to pause, how to prevent choking, how to make sure each small feed became strength. They spoke about hygiene, about guarding Ruhi from common infections like cough, cold, and fever, small illnesses that could slow her path to surgery. They checked her growth, supported her nutrition through EBMA’s free nutrition programme, and guided the mother and the family whenever doubt returned.
Life remained hard, but something inside the family shifted. Ruhi’s parents began to move with purpose instead of panic. Her father worked long hours, carrying more than tiles and tools, carrying the quiet hope that one day his daughter would smile without pain. Her mother poured every moment into Ruhi’s care, learning new ways to hold her, feed her, soothe her, becoming braver with every sunrise. And then the day they had been counting down to through worries, through prayers, through careful routines finally arrived.
At just six months old, Ruhi underwent her cleft lip surgery at the EBMA Foundation’s Kolkata centre, supported by Muthoot Finance Limited under the Muthoot Shape a Smile project. What had once felt unreachable became real in a single, trembling moment: hospital lights, waiting-room silence, and two parents holding onto faith because it was all they had.
When Ruhi came out of surgery, her tiny face carried the softness of a new beginning. The gap that had held so much fear and uncertainty was now met with healing and with hope that finally had a shape.
In that moment, her parents stopped seeing only what had frightened them at birth. They began to see the possibility that Ruhi as she could grow, learn, laugh, and belong in every place a child deserves to belong.
Today, their home feels lighter. The air holds more laughter than silence. Where worry once sat at the centre of every conversation, new dreams have begun to take its place.
Ruhi still has a journey ahead her cleft palate surgery is yet to be done. But this time, her parents no longer feel swallowed by fear. They have a path, they have support, and they know deeply now that they are not alone.
And in Ruhi’s quiet, growing smile is a powerful promise: a future shaped not by what she was born with, but by what she is surrounded by dignity, confidence, and endless possibilities.