The Moral Vision
Overcoming Handicaps
~ 176 ~
OVERCOMING HANDICAPS
A
dancer from South India, Sudha Chandran, was
only sixteen years old when she broke her right leg
in an accident on May 2, 1981. She was immediately
taken to a local hospital. Without taking the
necessary preliminary precautions, such as cleaning
her wound and administering anti-tetanus
injections, the doctors put her leg in plaster from
thigh to toe. As the pain increased, her parents
shifted her to a hospital in Madras. When the
plaster was stripped off, it transpired that her leg
had begun to blacken—a clear indication that
infection had reached the bone and gangrene had
set in. The doctors did all that they could, but her
leg could not be saved. On June 6, 1981, it was
amputated three inches below the knee.
Sudha’s unbounded love for dancing had not
abated. “I want to dance,” she used to cry in
anguish. “Will I ever dance again?”
She was fitted with a modern artificial leg, known
as the “Jaipur foot”. The inventor of this foot, Dr
P.K. Sethi, happened to meet Sudha’s teacher, who
