“I have broken bones while sleeping.”
P* is 34. She lives in Borivali, a suburb of Mumbai, the city where she was born and raised. She works at an office in one of the city’s commercial hubs and spends hours on the infamous local trains every day. Much like most people in the city.
But P’s life is starkly different from the 18 million-odd people she encounters on these trains. She has extremely brittle bones—a result of a disorder called osteogenesis imperfecta, or OI. “My first fracture was when I turned three, and my mom was calling my sister and me to have some syrup at night.