One of the most fascinating news I’ve been hearing the past week is the 8-limbed girl from India who had her extra pair of legs and arms have been surgically removed. The girl, Lakshmi Tatma, named after a Hindu goddess with also eight limbs, has just undergone a 27-hour surgery at the Sparsh Hospital, and is recuperating well as of Saturday, October 10. Okay, before you jump into conclusion and call Lakshmi a freak, lets get more scientific and try to understand her rare condition.

This two-year-old Indian girl, is actually twins – conjoined, or more specifically, “parasitic” twins. Her other half however stopped developing inside the womb, thus when Lakshmi was born she had with her extra limbs from her headless twin. At birth, she carried with her the organs and body parts of the undeveloped fetus, one that rarely happens, or about once in every 50,000 conjoined twin births.

Thankfully, with the advancement of technology and surgical procedures, Lakshmi will not have to live like this for the rest of her life. Lakshmi was brought to Bangalore by her labourer father Shambhu and mother Poonam for the surgery at Sparsh Hospital. Due to the rare medical condition of the child and the financial incapacity of her parents, the hospital was generous enough to bear all the costs of the surgery which would reach about $60,000 dollars.

The Tatmas were allowed to spend 15 minutes with her after the grueling procedure and were very happy to see their child’s quick recovery from a very risky surgery.