The Curse of the Deformed Baby

Here we go again. A baby in a remote Nepalese village was born with an attached parasitic twin. Because the twin has no head, it looks like the baby has four arms and four legs. And because critical thinking skills have yet to be taught the world over, thousands of people believe the baby may be an incarnation of the Hindu god Ganesh. That wouldn't necessarily be so bad. Well, except for the fact that the baby's family has to put up with a bunch of rabid rubbernecking pilgrims when they're just trying to work and take care of their kid. But some don't believe the baby is a god on Earth so much as a plague on society. One local Hindu priest has said he believes the baby is a punishment on its mother for sins she committed in a past life and is the reason the monsoon rains are late this year. This is just another helpful reminder that anyone who believes in karma has to also believe that cripples deserve it. In addition to the pain she felt from carrying such an unusually shaped baby to term, the mother, Januk Ghimire also had to suffer under the fear that she might be murdered as a witch for birthing a deformed child. Consistency in their nuttiness, apparently, isn't her neighbors' strong suit. Ghimire and her husband would like to just take their child for surgery to remove the excess limps, but they obviously can't afford it. And I'm sure their HMO has tried to pass off the god-devil-witch baby as a pre-existing condition. More details here.