A new face for Kalyani

As they said goodbye, a powerful wave of emotion passed between them. The father of two from India was quite overcome and tears flowed as he bowed his head and clung to the London surgeon's hand. Neither man said a word. They understood each other perfectly. All they had to do was look at the enchanting little girl dancing before them to know that now, at last, she had been given the chance of a normal future.

And when Kalyani looked at herself in the mirror on her fifth birthday a few days ago, she turned to her father, Ganurat Battulwar, and beamed. "That isn't Kalyani any more," she said. "Now I have a new face, do you think I should have a new name?"

Her father laughed delightedly, telling her gently she was still his precious Kalyani, just much more beautiful. She certainly looks nothing like she did just a few weeks ago.

The two halves of her skull failed to join up in the womb and she was born with a severe facial deformity. The little girl, who lives in central India with her older sister and parents, is too young to appreciate what the doctors have done for her and how fundamentally her life will be changed.

She may well forget she ever came to London. But her father never will and one day he will tell her all about it. It is a powerful story of parental hope over reality. One that enabled Kalyani to become only the second child to be treated by Facing the World - a new charity set up by craniofacial plastic surgeon Martin Hirigoyen Kelly and fellow medics.

Its public launch in February could hardly have been more glamorous. Kelly, who prefers to be known as Martin Kelly, is married to gorgeous actress Natascha McElhone who costars with George Clooney in the film Solaris. The film's UK premiere became a charity event, with the profits going to Facing the World.

Kelly has known Natascha since she was 15 years old, but it wasn't until 10 years later that they started dating. "I always thought she was an extraordinarily generous, selfless person with a great sense of humour. We share a strong humanitarian take on life and get on very well.

"I am very proud of her and think she is a great actress, but she is not a film star at home. She is my wife and the mother of my son. Nor do we sit and watch her films. During the day she does her job and I do mine."

The aim of Facing the World is to bring children with congenital facial deformities from Third World countries to be operated on in Britain. "You can sort out problems like cleft palates in the most primitive conditions," says Kelly, "but you can't operate on major deformities.

"I and fellow surgeon Norman Waterhouse, who leads the specialist craniofacial unit at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, decided that we wanted to bring such children over here to help them.

"These children are shunned and even stoned in Third World countries. They cannot form relationships or be employed. Instead they are seen as being the work of the devil and the mother is usually blamed for doing something wrong in pregnancy.

"The charity will pay for a child and one parent to come to London and cover their living and hospital costs, which works out at between £10,000 and £15,000," Kelly says. "That is based on the medical team giving their services free."

Kelly, 38, is 6ft 3in tall, dark and devastatingly handsome, with long, slender hands. He and Natascha, who is also starring in the films Laurel Canyon and for the BBC The Other Boleyn Girl, have a son aged two and another baby due mid May. They live comfortably in Fulham, a far cry from Kalyani's home.

She was born in February 1998 into a poor Hindu family who live in a sparse, two-room hut. The parents and children sleep in the same room - behind a grocery store in a small town in the Wani district of central India. Her father now delivers milk, earning the equivalent of a paltry £60 a month, but when Kalyani was born he earned even less, sweeping and tidying in stores.

And yet, just months before her fifth birthday, Kalyani and her father, who had never left India, stepped on a plane bound for London and just eight days later on 15 March, she had a 10-hour operation at the Cromwell Hospital, in Earl's Court.

The medical team included two craniofacial surgeons, seven other surgeons responsible for different parts of her face, a radiologist and paediatrician, all of whom gave their services free. "If she had had to pay for the entire treatment, it would have cost about £100,000," says Kelly.

It was a delicate and complex operation. "We peeled off the face from the skull, exposing the brain. We then removed her forehead bone, cut round her eye sockets and moved the eyes together. We gave her a new forehead, using bone from the back of her skull. After that we proceeded to make her a new nose using cartilage, skin and bone from various parts of her head. It was a total success with no post-operative complications.

"Initially, we were worried how she would cope psychologically being in hospital in such a different environment and with a different language, but she is a feisty little thing and has been fine. She's even learned a little English."

Kalyani stayed in hospital for a week after the operation and throughout that time her father kept a picture of what she originally looked like at the end of her bed to show everyone who passed by. "No one could believe how she has changed," he says proudly.

Kalyani and her father then stayed with their cousin for some weeks, before returning to hospital for minor adjustments to her eyelids and nose. She was due to go home the day after we met.

"We have arranged through various international charities for an ear, nose and throat specialist to keep an eye on her back home," says Kelly. "After-care is very important. Her scars have already faded and will be barely visible in a year's time.

"It is particularly wonderful to note the impact her operation has had on her personality. She's become very outgoing and keeps telling her father that now she wants to go to school." Her father nods. "She looks so different. I don't know if her mother will even recognise her," he says.

Speaking through an interpreter he told me that Kalyani's birth was traumatic for him and his wife. "When we saw her we both thought we had been punished by the gods and must have done something terribly wrong. My wife was very depressed."

Nevertheless he was determined to do the best for his daughter. When she was 14 months old he took her on the 20-hour train journey to see doctors in Bombay, but without any success. "They told me she was too young to do anything and in any case it would be too expensive for me."

He refused to give up. "In India it is very difficult for girls who look different to marry. Nor could we have sent her to a mainstream school for fear people would be unkind and laugh at her."

While he continued to try doctors in India within a 100-mile radius of where he lived, a cousin who is married to an Englishman and lives in Cambridgeshire, wrote a letter in English for him to send to surgeons around the world. Over the subsequent four years more than 400 letters were sent pleading for help.

About six months ago, his titanic struggle was about to reap its reward. His letter dropped on the desk of Martin Kelly. "I looked at her picture, recognised her condition and began investigating her medical background," he explains. "Her medical records proved she was in good health, so we agreed that the charity would help her.

"When you work within the NHS you get embroiled in so many nonmedical pressures, but operating on Kalyani is being a doctor in its purest, most satisfying, sense."

Donations can be made to www.facingtheworld.co.uk or by post to Freepost Nate 1449 London, SW10 9BR.