For over a billion human beings, today is the holiest day of the year.<\/p>\n
The goddess Lakshmi is the personification of beauty and prosperity. \u00a0Born from an ocean of milk, she is a woman of golden complexion, sitting or standing on a full-bloomed lotus and holding a lotus bud, which stands for beauty, purity, and fertility. Her four hands represent the four ends of human life: dharma<\/em> or righteousness, kama<\/em> or desires, artha <\/em>or wealth, and moksha <\/em>or liberation from the cycle of birth and death.\u00a0 To Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, today is her day, Lakshmi Pooja, the third day of the five-day festival of lights.\u00a0 On this day, Lakshmi showers the earth with health and prosperity.<\/p>\n For one young girl from the village of Bihar, India, today is a blessed day indeed. \u00a0Lakshmi Tatma was born neither beautiful nor wealthy. \u00a0She developed from two conjoined twins, with two bodies merged into one, and was born with 8 arms and legs. \u00a0Many of the locals considered her holy, but her condition would not allow her to survive into adulthood. \u00a0Her parents, poor laborers, could not afford the half-million-dollar surgery that was needed to extend her life. \u00a0But the power of her namesake came to her aid, and this week 36 surgeons successfully performed a marathon operation to free her of her \u201cparasitic\u201d twin. \u00a0Free of charge.\u00a0 Lakshmi Tatma awoke on Lakshmi Pooja as a beautiful young woman, to face a hard but hopefully prosperous life.<\/p>\n A miracle?\u00a0 Perhaps.\u00a0 But certainly worthy of a prayer on this, the holiest of days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For over a billion human beings, today is the holiest day of the year. The goddess Lakshmi is the personification of beauty and prosperity. \u00a0Born from an ocean of milk, she is a woman of golden complexion, sitting or standing on a full-bloomed lotus and holding a lotus bud, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[283,613,708,709,710,823,899],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2","tag-conjoined-twins","tag-india","tag-lakshmi","tag-lakshmi-pooja","tag-lakshmi-tatma","tag-miracle","tag-operation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}