You and I

Shakeel Ahmed has retreated from the spotlight. Back home, he will consult with friends and family about the proposed surgery by a famous American doctor to separate his daughters, conjoined at the head since birth. But while the decision may be taken behind closed doors in Patna, one thing can be said already. This poll season, Bihar’s capital city will be riveting for a story other than its stale political thriller. A nation will look to Patna, this October, and wonder about the unfolding of a far grittier narrative that brings face-to-face the most ancient of human trysts — with individual identity — and the most cutting edge of possibilities — in medical science. This is Farah-and-Saba’s story, and all of us who watched images of the two 10-year-olds on TV, or read about them in the newspapers during their trip to the Delhi hospital over the last few days, have been hopelessly locked into it.

This is a moment of great hope. It will be a decision tinged with great pain. The twins share a blood drainage vessel in the brain. Separating them will require an extraordinary and intricate procedure. Procedures can go wrong, as they did in the July of 2003. In a hospital in Singapore, Laleh and Ladan Bijani, law graduates and Iranian twins also conjoined in the head, lost the battle for their lives, after doctors laboured for 53 hours to fulfil their dreams of a separate life. But what has stayed behind, with all the readers, viewers and voyeurs who tracked their quest for ‘‘new and wonderful lives as two separate persons’’, is their sheer will-to-life as they consciously took on a 50-50 chance of surviving.

In days ahead, there will be debates about frontiers, and daunting ethical questions. In these days and months, the media will be called upon to record new medical ground being broken, and also to know when to retreat so as not to violate human dignity. In Saba and Farah’s heroic quest for identity and individuality, we have all been touched by a predicament that is deeper and more agonising than we could have imagined.