TESTIMONY. “I have hypertrichosis, they call me the werewolf”

Some children come into the world with a tuft of hair on their head, but few are born with hair everywhere. This was the case of Lalit Patidar. This 17-year-old young man, native of Nandleta, a small village in Madhya Pradesh, a vast state in central India, is suffering from a rare genetic disease, congenital hypertrichosis. “He was brought to me half an hour after giving birth, his whole body was covered with hair, recalls Parvati-bai, Lalit’s mother. The nurse was surprised, she asked the doctor what was wrong with him. was fine. He told us not to worry, that our child was fine. He shaved him and that was it.”

Hypertrichosis causes, from birth, an excessive development of hair on the face and on the body. Only about fifty cases have been recorded since the Middle Ages, but the visual effect, very spectacular because face, ears and shoulders are entirely covered with hair, is surely at the origin of the myths of the wild man and the wolf- were. People affected by this disease have sometimes been exhibited in fair or circus shows under the names of “man-dog” or “woman with a beard”.

“I didn’t understand why the children were afraid of me”

Lalit’s diagnosis was made at age 6. His parents took the hit, but that didn’t change the love they had for him. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the children of his school, nor of the inhabitants of the village. Mockery, cruel, quickly became his daily life.

“The little ones were afraid when they saw me and I didn’t understand why. As I grew up, I realized that not everyone had hair everywhere on their body. Many were afraid that I would bite them, like an animal”, he remembers. “When we were walking, the other children, and sometimes even their parents, made fun of him and called him a monkey. They threw stones at him,” says his best friend, who admits that he too was afraid of his comrade the first time. times he met her.

Today, he has over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube and Instagram!

No cure exists for this rare disease, so Lalit had to learn to live with it. “I slowly realized that I was different from ordinary humans, but in a positive way: I was unique. I learned a lot of things. But the most important thing was to have accepted my uniqueness and to hold on. I’ve decided to never give up and live my life to the fullest. I just want to move on and be happy.”

Today creator of videos in which he stages himself, he is followed by more than 110,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, and more than 100,000 on his Instagram account, where he likes to remind his audience of the values ​​of tolerance. “You always have to respect everyone, no matter what a person looks like. They can have any disease, that’s not what matters. ” A splendid example of courage and resilience.