Sister Ambika Pillai is seated at a table while answering the children’s questions around the table, all busily creating decorations out of colored paper.
Pillai, a member of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Garden, is the secretary of Navjeevan (New Life) Children’s Home in Khandwa, a town in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
The children at the center mostly come from broken families — typically abandoned or orphaned — who end up loitering around train stations; oftentimes, their fathers were addicted to drugs and their mothers were unable to make enough money to support their families, Pillai said.
“In some cases, children run away after being scolded or questioned by parents for something,” Pillai told GSR, adding that in such cases, “we do our best to reunite them with their families.”
Wearing a loose black skirt and a shawl swung around her neck, the nun gets up from the table and walks with the help of a stick and a prosthetic leg.
Six years ago, she lost her left leg in a train accident.
Sister Pillai’s “dedication to serve the runaway children even after losing a leg is amazing,” said Pranay Barve, one of the nun’s friends who is tasked by the railways to identify such children.