“When I was young, I had people throw stones at me,” Lalit Patidar, 17, told Media Drum World of his thick curly mane. “Kids were worried I would come back to bite them like an animal.”
Patidar, who lives in Nandleta in Madhya Pradesh, specifically suffers from hypertrichosis, which the National Library of Medicine defines as “excessive hair growth anywhere on the body.”
There are two distinct types of the ailment: generalized hypertrichosis, which occurs over the entire body, and the localized version, which is restricted to a specific region of the body. Hypertrichosis can be either present at birth or crop up in adulthood.
The ailment, which is also known as “werewolf syndrome,” is extremely rare, with fewer than 100 recorded cases since the middle ages.
Patidar has reportedly been suffering from the condition his “whole life” — but didn’t really notice anything was awry until adolescence.
“My parents say the doctor shaved me at birth but I didn’t really notice anything was different about me until I was around 6 or 7 years old,” the high school senior explained. “That’s when I first took notice that the hair was growing all over my body like no one else I knew.”
Doctors subsequently diagnosed Patidar with hypertrichosis, which he found odd as none of his other family members suffer from the affliction.
As time passed, Patidar increasingly became aware of the fact that he was different from the other kids. “As I grew up I realized that my whole body had hair and that was not like everyone else,” said the teen, who soon become the target of bullying due to his unusual appearance.
Thankfully, Patidar has since learned to embrace his unique countenance, and not let it prevent him from leading a happy and fulfilling life.
“I am different from common humans in a good way, I am unique,” declared the follicularly endowed fellow. “Slowly everyone in my family started feeling normal about it and my friends also encouraged me a lot.”
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