Baru Sahib – Portraits

The whole Operation Rainbow Canada team

Dr. Rai, head surgeon on the left, and some of our excellent hosts, Col. And Mrs. Anand on the Right.

Two friends waiting for their lip revisions.

Women who have suffered terrible burns to their necks, chests and arms. The woman on the right asked me for this portrait. Many people asked me for portraits but I could not get an email address. I wish I had a way of sending them their photos.


Before and after of a girl with a cleft lip and palate. Girls are ORC’s first priority.


This girl suffered burns on one side of her head. We couldn’t communicate but I enjoyed her company so we hung out regularly—she kept an eye on what I was up to.

This little guy is healing nicely a week later. Because of the great distances patients travelled for surgery, not many were able to come back for a check-up.

Happy parents post-surgery.

A few of my hospital friends.


I was always interested to see how the correction of the lip affected the shape of the nose.

Me with my friend Dr. Deepak from BC Children’s Hospital. To shoot in the OR I had to wear scrubs which turned out to be great clothes for the climate.

The students were wild about photos, or “snaps” as they called them. That was of course fine by me! I took snaps of them, I gave them a camera here and they took snaps of me. I’m glad to have the snaps.

A patient’s daughter shows off her new bridal costume.

Pooja is 17. Dr. Rai carefully grafted new skin around her eye, even reconstructing her eyebrow. This second shot is only two days post-surgery and has a lot of healing to do, but we wanted to get a shot before leaving. Pooja was more than happy to pose. She said that she has only ever hidden from the camera, but on this day she wanted to take some shots with her mother too.


Our last staff meeting.

Suni waited a long time for her cleft lip surgery. She is married and had a couple of kids waiting for her back home.

show hide 8 comments

Kirsten These are beautiful. My dad has been to Bangalore many times on business and says the people there are some of the nicest he’s ever met. Even for people who have gone through so much, like in your pictures above, they still seem to have such good attitudes. I’m jealous of the opportunity you got to do this!

Jatinder i feel great work done by you. Working for the humanity, bringing the smile back to their patients, simply great!

I am working at Delhi Office of Baru Sahib in the media department, can i have high resolution files of above photograph? will be very useful for us.

Thanks & Regards

kim hayes these are heartbreakingly beautiful!

kim hayes your work is so unique and pure! i’ve just spent the last 20 minutes looking though your blog. so lovely…

Harpreet Please post more picture or please email..

shivali and komal beautiful and everlasting memories 🙂

shivali and komal beautiful and evrlasting memories 🙂

india » lucida-photography […] burns. You can visit the posts about my time in the Akal Charitable Hospital of Baru Sahib here, here and here. (Yes, three posts.) After my stint up north I met Jules at the New Delhi airport and we […]

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