Saying that I learn more myself from being a teacher than I teach my kids is saying it very plainly. It has been an extremely reflective experience and almost every other day I end up with a lot of questions about myself, my beliefs, my children, communities, change and the list goes on.. Days when I am torn and ripped apart by my thoughts are not a rarity. One such recent experience has been the story of one of our kids adoption. Roopa didi and me stayed back after school hours to finish some work together and one of the kids stayed back with us. Every time I asked her if there was no problem if she went back home late she said only one thing - No didi. Its OK. And the next day when I got to know what keeps her away from home, I was left speechless... The kid lost her mother to cancer. Her father ran away and for a few months she lived on the roads with her drunk grandmother. A christian gentleman found her on the streets and wanted to help her. He took her home and the little girl was very happy to have a loving family again. She had a father, a mother and a little sister. It seemed like everything will be happy ever after but after a few months things turned around. The kid came with her own set of behavioural patterns and the family also had its own set of problems. The mother gave-up saying I cannot take care of two kids and stopped talking to the kid. The kid is being asked to call her new mother aunty and the gentleman realized that he cannot have the kid at home for very long. A few child specialists suggested that it would be better for the kid if we got her rid of the confusion whether she has a family or not. They suggested that we prepare her to accept that she is an orphan and that she has to go to hostel (orphanage) where she will be taken care of because she is growing up fast and this confusion is not a healthy state for a kid to be in. Radha didi is doing everything she can to make sure the child goes to a safe place and the process is legal. And this is why the kid doesnt like going home...because it doesnt feel like one anymore... This experience left me heart broken with a lotttt of questions... Would the woman have said that she cannot take care of two kids if both the kids were her own? Did the little kid deserve this confusion? If I adopt a kid, will I be able to make everyone around me love the kid like my own? Will I be able to give that kid a family? How open are we as a society to the concept of adoption? Cannot another kid be treated like our own? Is blood the only thing that makes a kid/person our own? It is good to have a family by blood but can we ever come out of the confines of relationships based on blood, caste, religion or region, look beyond and accept others as equals? One question that hit me really hard: Do all our kids need to be our kids by blood? Can most of us not adopt atleast one kid? Are our own kids not as alien to us, when they are born, as an adopted kid? Can we predict what our kids by blood grow up into? Do our kids by blood not trouble us? Do we always like what our families do? Why do most of us never consider adopting a kid?
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 17:28:37 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015