At 13, Virali Modi told her mother she was built to be a star. Soon after, the then US-based teenager bagged a national commercial with Pepsi. At 14, Modi returned from a monsoon vacation in India, excited for her big break. Instead, she contracted a mysterious fever that led her in and out of emergency rooms in Pennsylvania hospitals, where she was declared dead — three times. At 26, the disability activist, now based in Mumbai, recounts her brush with death and feels more alive. Mother Pallavi Modi helps link the chains in their extraordinary journey.
Pallavi Modi: They asked me to pull the plug a week before her birthday
It was 2006. Virali had missed a chance to star in a Pepsi commercial due to a sudden bout of ill health in August, but it wasn't until September that the fever and headaches turned into hallucinations. Medicines would only stall the fever for a while — but the blood and urine tests, optical check ups and CT scans all came back clean. Things took a turn for the worse on September 11 and she had to be admitted to Penn State's Hershey Milton Medical Centre. The next day, when even her MRI results gave the doctors no lead, Virali was taken in for a spinal tap, following which she suffered a seizure, vomited a lot and her heart stopped. That was the first time my daughter was declared dead. Repeated CPR by doctors brought back her heartbeat, but she had stopped breathing and had to be put on a ventilator. Things looked scary over the next few days and she had to be administered a second spinal tap, after which she slipped into a coma. But I didn't give up hope. By this time, all our relatives had come down, and the doctors were considering pulling the plug. I was asked for consent on September 21st, eight days before her 15th birthday. "Keep her alive till the 29th, I want to celebrate my daughter's birthday," I pleaded with them. They resisted, then relented. On September 29, 2006, as the hospital clock neared 3:05pm — Virali's birth time — all of us family members surrounded her bed, singing happy birthday. We had decorated the room with balloons and there was cake. Then, just as her father held her hand to mimic cake cutting, she opened her eyes.
The nurse ran out of the room, and the doctors had me in an embrace. "She is alive only because of you, Mrs Modi," I remember them saying. A battery of tests followed — we were warned that she might have lost coherence or her memory, but Virali proved them all wrong. My daughter defied all odds. My daughter survived.
Virali Modi: I was looking down at a girl who looked like me
Although mum's story helped me piece together the sequence of events later, oddly enough, I have memories of my own from the period. I remember looking down at the hospital bed, observing, as if from a distance, this girl who looked so much like me, lying still amidst tubes and grieving relatives. I remember feeling freaked out because I could not understand what was happening to her. Mum tells me that I'd have tears rolling down my eyes every time a family member talked to me. But at the same time, I sensed that this girl was in healing. It's not easy to explain. Think of it like looking down at a Pokemon in a Heal Ball (a fictitious ball wherein a Pokemon's energy and vital stats are restored) — still, and waiting to be recharged.
After I recovered, I had a dream where I saw everything that was happening while I was supposed to be in coma, which is why my memory is so definite. My first words after I gained consciousness medically, was "Daddy". I remember saying those words, I remember waking up. I remember almost everything. Does that make me want to believe in miracles? Not as much as it makes me want to believe in people, and in my 'self'. Holding onto faith is what I took away from my encounter with death. My mother had faith that I'd chose life. Now I have the faith to make it count. I wouldn't have it any other way.
(Virali Modi has been associated with disability rights campaigns like #mytraintoo and #rampmyrestaurant. She was a speaker at TEDx Talks 2017)
