American charity Water is Life has released a video featuring a young Indian girl born into slum conditions who, despite her hardships, cannot cry because she suffers from extreme dehydration.

The video, which has had over 1.4m views on YouTube, follows the girl as she reveals that she did not cry when she was forced to work collecting items from a rubbish dump nor when she saw her brother die.

She is also shown witnessing her mother supposedly prostituting herself and her forced marriage to an older man. Throughout this she states that she “did not cry”, however she states near the end of the film that the reason she did not cry is not because she doesn’t want to, but because she can’t.

The film ends with the lines: “extreme dehydration prevents the body from preventing tears” and “extreme dehydration makes desperate stories even worse”. 

Water is Life provides clean drinking water, sanitation and hygiene education programs to schools and villages and to those in desperate need.