Say A Little Prayer

My uncle and I walked into the famous Mutter Museum, located on 19 South 22nd Street in center Philadelphia. As a doctor, my uncle was excited to see the biological deformities and medical monstrosities that have come to make the museum such an incredible place. The museum of such high expectations is quite small in size, with only two floors and three rooms with large glass showcases. Among the most famous of the medical phenomena found in the museum are a plaster cast of a liver that once belonged to Siamese twins, the cast of a woman whose body has physically turned into soap, and a giant colon that could fit a basketball inside of it.

As I finished my analysis of the “Soap Lady” and many other oddities on the top floor, I observed my uncle at the corner of the bottom floor fixated on another specimen. As I reached his position, I found him staring at a plaster of a carcass of two babies conjoined at the hip with four arms. He looked at me and told me that this figure was a religious symbol.

My uncle had also worked in the Hindu temple for quite some time before earning a medical degree. I didn’t understand his statement that such a deformed figure could represent Hinduism in anyway. He reminded me of goddess Durga, which has ten arms, each bearing a different weapon, and various other gods and goddesses that possessed physical deformities. In ancient times, a child born like the one in the glass showcase would represent a message from god, and Hindu clerics would interpret a deformed or impaired child as a religious symbol. According to my uncle, this is the reason why deformities have always been celebrated in Hindu religion.

As I veered away to look at another item across the room, I stared back towards my uncle, who stood in the same spot, still facing the deformed child, with his hands clasped together, eyes shut, saying a prayer quietly to himself.