Wearing silver anklets Riddhi steadily paces ahead, on realising that her four-year-old twin sister Siddhi is struggling to keep up with her, she extends a helping hand. The twins who turned four on Wednesday, have recently started attending a playgroup run by Pratham NGO.
With their biological parents refusing to care for them, the twins are being brought up by the staff of Wadia hospital. "Siddhi doesn't like to walk too much. She gets tired but Riddhi is completely fine now," said Shobha Gaikar, 65, who lives with the two girls and looks after them.
"To me, they are like my own family members. I go back home for four days but I call them multiple times a day to check on them," says Gaikar who the girls lovingly call as mummy. Their parents, however, rarely call.
The twins have gone through three surgeries and might need two more corrective surgeries.
Their playgroup which is close to the hospital is where they recently learned to write alphabets. "The family visited them on their first birthday but they have not returned since then. They don't want to take them back," says Sonali Jadhav, one of the staff members who looks after the twins when Gaikar is away.
For now, the twins are being looked by the hospital as well as various donors. "It was a challenging case and we weren't sure if they would walk but our confidence won," said Dr Minnie Bodhanwala, CEO of the hospital.
"The parents have two other children and are very poor. We have a lot of people and NGOs who have come forward to support them," she added. Apllauding the magician's performance at their birthday party, both were comfortable among the many people who had gathered to celebrate their birthday.
