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One of the conjoined twins - Source: ONE News -
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On the second floor of the Mother Teresa orphanage in Dhaka there is a whiteboard covered in photos of babies who have been cared for at the home, including one of twins Trishna and Krishna.
"It's the only photo we have of them," Sister Grace, one of the senior nuns at the home, told AFP of the two-year-old girls who underwent successful separation surgery in Australia on Tuesday.
"When they arrived here in January 2007 we had only heard about Siamese twins in books," Sister Grace said, adding she would keep praying for the twins because of the danger they now faced after the operation.
The twins were born on December 22, 2006 in the southern city of Khulna and were abandoned by their parents, who were unable to care for them.
"They are not in touch with us. Because of the appearance of the babies they could not keep them," Sister Grace said.
From the Mother Teresa Home in Khulna, the girls were shifted to the capital, Dhaka, where Australian aid worker Danielle Noble was volunteering on her weekends.
It was Noble, now 27, who along with her friend Natalie Silcock fund-raised and campaigned to get Trishna and Krishna to Australia two years ago.
Atom Rahman, an Australian businessman who works between Melbourne and Dhaka, put them in touch with the Melbourne-based charity the Children First Foundation which was instrumental in the shift.
The charity's chief Moira Kelly is the girls' legal guardian.
"We do not want any credit," Sister Grace said. "It's our work. But the credit must go to Danielle, Natalie and Atom. They really worked hard and without them it would never have happened."
It is business as usual behind the heavy gates at the home, where 10 nuns, 60 children and a handful of mothers and helpers live, but the world's media have not stopped calling since the operation.
"So many people are phoning about these girls, day and night. Before no one knew about these girls. It's only since the operation," said Sister Nivedita.
The home is also where senator John McCain's wife, Cindy, discovered the couple's adopted Bangladeshi daughter Bridget who was born with a cleft palate and abandoned by her unmarried mother in 1991.
Around 200,000 children in Bangladesh are now orphaned or abandoned, living in government-run or privately owned homes, according to the country's social welfare department.
Many of them have deformities that lead their parents to abandon them.
Three recent operations in Bangladesh to separate conjoined twins dating back to July 2006 have resulted in the deaths of five out of six children, AFP records show.
In August last year, surgeons in Dhaka separated four-month-old girls Banya ("Flood") and Barsha ("Rain") who were joined at the stomach and chest but had separate limbs.
Barsha died hours after the surgery but Banya, now 18 months old, is still alive and doing well, according to chief surgeon Shafiqul Hoque who described Trishna and Krishna's operation as a "tremendous success".
"We lack expert paediatric neurosurgeons here for such an operation to be performed," he said.
In the garden of the Mother Teresa Home in Dhaka, 25-year-old Hyacinth, one of the oldest orphans there who arrived when she was a baby, said she was thrilled to hear the Australian operation had been a success.
"When I first saw that they were joined at the head it was a bit scary. I had never seen anything like that before. One was skinny and the other was fatter. One was always sicker," she said.
"It was sad when they left but we also knew that this was their only chance to live. We often call Australia and we think about them often. On the day of the operation, we prayed all day.
"I think they will come back one day and see us. I can't imagine cuddling them now as two separate babies."
