When little Surya sees his reflection in water it warms the cockles of his heart.

When Surya now sees his reflection in water, he is warmed to the cockles of his heart. Every child should be happy when they see their reflection.

For Surya these moments were everything but positive. Almost every day he helped his father doing the laundry at the water's edge of the lake where they worked jointly for the family's sparse income. Whenever he saw his face reflected in the water’s surface he would have liked to run away. The eight-year old Indian boy suffered greatly due to his extremely broad cleft lip and palate, which badly disfigured his otherwise warm face.

It bothered him a lot when he saw other people disgusted by his appearance. The other inhabitants of the poor part of Chitoor near Chennai treated him like an outcast because of his cleft. Some people called him a monster.
 

With the help of charitable donations, we were able to operate on the young boy at our Cleft-centre in Chennai; an intervention which Surya's family could never have afforded. When the boy now sees his face reflected in the water he can hardly remember his severe disfigurement. He finally has a "normal" face and the chance of a future without sorrow and pain.