Behind every surgery

By Deepthi Krishnan, Watsi Representative at G.S. Memorial Hospital, Varanasi, India | November 2026

Part of my work involves teaming up with Watsi, a crowdfunding platform where people from around the world come together to fund surgeries for post-burn contractures and other reconstructive procedures for our patients.

On paper, that sounds straightforward. In reality, it means sitting across from families, hearing how they got here, and trying to help them put into words something that isn't always easy to talk about.

I learn something new in almost every interview.

The barriers these families deal with aren't always obvious. Some come from circumstance. Some come from a system that was never really designed with them in mind. I've seen there is a kind of social conditioning that tells people to just stay quiet and manage. There's unequal access. And there are costs that no family should have to carry alone. So, we help them to not carry these burdens alone.

What makes this work even more meaningful is that I don't just hear these stories; I actually get to see what happens after.

I've been able to sit in on surgeries and watch Dr. Subodh Kumar Singh and our team work. It's hard to describe it as anything other than magic. Watching a contracture get released, a hand start working again, a child move in ways they couldn't before — that is a completely different experience than just hearing about it.

I am not the one performing these surgeries.

I can't fix the system overnight either.

But I do get to be a kind of bridge, connecting a family's need to a stranger's generosity, and a patient's pain to a surgeon's hands that can actually heal it.

I am grateful to the parents who let me into their world, even briefly.

Grateful to G.S. Memorial Plastic Surgery Hospital and Trauma Center, to Dr. Subodh Kumar Singh and the whole team here. And grateful for a community like Watsi that makes this entire thing possible.