In the middle of a fierce game of Goats and Tigers, the version of tag played in India, a tiny but

enthusiastically growling “tiger” suddenly slowed, dropped to his knees, and struggled to catch his

breath. Gina Pestak ’08 – despite her premed studies and all that she had learned in her two

weeks as a volunteer at the Sivananda Rehabilitation Home in Hyderabad, India – made the

wrong diagnosis.


While the other children watched 5-year-old Sunnat with only mild concern, Gina raced to the medical

office to search Sunnat’s medications for an inhaler, sure that he was having an asthma attack. There

was no inhaler. She ran back outside to find Sunnat still panting in the dust and shouted for the children

to find the nurse. They looked at her, puzzled. “Akka [big sister], why?” one of them finally ventured.


Then Gina heard Sunnat cough and realized her error. This was the deep, heavy cough of someone

with tuberculosis, which Sunnat – as well as many of the center’s 30 other orphans who were

infected by HIV/AIDS – had previously suffered as an opportunistic infection. He was so vigorous,

such a splendid tiger, that she had momentarily forgotten how sick he was.


She cried as she held Sunnat and later wrote in her travel blog, “The children knew all along.

For them, this is how things are. Their friends collapse in fits of coughing, and no one flinches…But

I don’t think for as long as I live, I will ever forget the sound of that cough – shattering my comfort,

and breaking my heart.”