It was Vaishnavi’s father, San, who first noticed something was wrong with his five-year-old daughter’s right eye. She wasn’t playing as much as she used to and would often fall over when she was walking. Sometimes she would tell him that she couldn’t see.
After noticing that something had developed in her eye, San took Vaishnavi to the doctor in their village in the state of Bihar. The doctor explained that Vaishnavi had a cataract and that with time it would only get worse. Most commonly, cataracts occur in older people, but the eye condition can appear at any age - even in childhood.