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Just two different kinds of love
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Adoption is an emotional issue that often defies an answer. But tackling it the right way can make its acceptance as normal as possible, both for the child in question and the adoptive and biological parents. REBECCA THOMAS meets an adopted `kid' who finally traced her parents.
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"Once there were two women,
Who never knew each other.
One, you do not remember,
The other, you call Mother.
Two different lives
Shaped to make yours one.
One became your guiding star,
The other became your sun.
And now you ask me through your tears
The age-old question, through the year... ,
`Heredity' or `environment,'
Which are you the product of?
`Neither my darling, neither'.
Just two different kinds of love".
(From: `The Legend Of An Adopted Child')
OF ALL the sad things in this world, the saddest, perhaps, is the moment when you have to tell the child you lovingly raised for years, that it is not your own. That he or she is not part of your flesh and blood, that there are no umbilical ties which bind you both inexorably to each other. Shattering, for both foster parent and adopted child.
"The truth hurts like hell. It's a raw wound, which will never heal,'' says Anjana Vandenbroucke, one among the countless adopted children who asks the one profound question: Why? Why did my biological parents do this to me? Questions which defy answers.
Anjana, born to Malayali parents and adopted by a Belgian couple 18 years ago, was back in her homeland on a heartrending search for her biological parents. And when she found them last week, they were separate entities with separate lives.
As the Adoption Week is being observed in India from November 14 to 21, adoption agencies are going all out to create a right awareness about the nuances of the issue
With very little rules to go by, adoption in the sixties and the seventies enjoyed a free run with children being sent out to foreign countries. Hardly any follow-up was done. Unfortunately, India lacks a thorough, loophole-free adoption legislation. A comprehensive adoption law protecting the child, the biological parents and the adoptive parents would be the ideal package.
At present the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, 1956, with its limited application and the archaic Guardian and Wards Act, 1890, form the groundwork for any adoption work.
Bringing in a ray of hope into an otherwise arid scenario came the 1984 landmark Supreme Court judgement, commonly known as the Supreme Court Guidelines, which have helped to create procedures and systems comparable to some of the best legislation on adoption in the world.
"Every child has a right to love, and be loved and to grow up in an atmosphere of love and affection and of moral and material security and this is possible only if the child is brought up in a family. But if, for any reason, it is not possible for the biological parents or other near relatives to look after the child or the child is abandoned, the next best alternative would be to find adoptive parents,'' said the apex court. It was only after the SC guidelines that there arose a method in the adoption scheme.
Says Mr. Antoni, general secretary of the Indian Council of Social Welfare, who is also project manager of CASP (Community-Aided Sponsorship Programme) at Rajagiri College of Social Sciences and who has been active in the adoption scenario of Kerala for years: "There was no scientific approach to adoption in the early seventies and the eighties, when adoption was synonymous with an inter-country deal in sending children over to foreign countries.'' Foundling homes stood to gain from such deals. Very often, the western affluence had an added allure for orphanages which saw in them not only an ideal set-up for orphaned children, but also scope for monetary gains.
But today, things have changed, thanks to the SC intervention. The Supreme Court judgement ordered that Voluntary Coordinating Agencies for Adoption be opened in all States.
Rajagiri College of Social Sciences is the VCA in Kerala, with chapter offices in Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode. It was set up in 1990.
Kerala today has 14 recognised member agencies which report directly to Rajagiri. Ever since its inception in 1990, the VCA could facilitate the adoption of 1,500 babies. The last ten years have recorded a steady rise in adoption. In 1990 five male babies and 2 girls were adopted. The year, 2000 saw a quantum jump with 105 girls and 79 boys given in adoption . The year ending March 2002 recorded 175 adoptions with 100 female and 75 male children going to adoptive parents in India alone.
Adoptive parents are put through rigorous counselling sessions. Couples are selected after a great deal of screening, their economic background being a major factor. Only a family with not less than an income of Rs 4,500 per month are encouraged to go in for adoption. Once the baby is given, the VCA monitors its progress till it turns 18 years.
Though the SC Guidelines laid down a strong base for adoption rules, several vital issues remain unaddressed, like the question of inheritance, for example. The Hindu Adoption Act allows the adopted child to be the sole and legal inheritor of his adoptive parents' wealth.
Not so in Christian families where, unless the adoptive parents execute a will and probate it, the adopted child will find itself left with next to nothing. All the wealth and property, if any, will go to the next of kin of the couple. The whole set-up is different in Muslim a family, where, if a couple is left childless, the religion permits the man to marry a second and even a third time, which explains why adoption is relatively low among Muslims.
The VCA now insists that Christian and Muslim couples compulsorily deposit Rs 25,000 in a recognised bank or financial investment agency in the name of the child in long-term savings so that the child will not be left with nothing to fall back upon in the eventuality of his adoptive parents' death.
With infertility rates going up at an alarming rate, the demand for adoption has gone up, but agencies are faced with a dearth of babies these days for the simple reason that babies born out of wedlock are few and far between because girls go in for the easier option of medical termination of pregnancy (MTP) rather than endure the burden and disgrace of bearing an illegally begotten baby.
"We received 300 applications this year, but only 190 babies came up for adoption,'' says Cicily Baby, Social Worker with Rajagiri-VCA.
There is a distinctive preference for baby girls. "Most women love baby girls more because they feel that girls lend themselves to be cuddled. Besides, couples feel that a boy, once he attains maturity, tends to leave his adoptive parents. It's the boy-child who always longs to see what his own mother's face looks like," says Ms Baby.
The Supreme Court guidelines turned the focus on in-country adoption. The Court says : "Every effort must be made to give a child in adoption to Indian parents before considering the possibility of placing it in adoption with foreign parents''.
Research into inter-country adoption has found that interracial adoption poses problems aplenty like an incurable identity confusion in the adopted child, which often results in his personal isolation. This isolation is a result of the culture shock and the problems, which result out of trying to integrate two lives and two worlds in a short period of time.
Children sense their racial difference right from the toddler years itself, which ultimately robs them of their feeling of belonging.
On the contrary, research has also proved that adopted children who overcome the trauma and accept the reality of dual parentage turn out to be real go-getters. The State Adoption Review Committee, headed by the Secretary, Social Welfare, Govt of Kerala and the Adoption Cell at the Directorate of Social Welfare, are the two bodies involved at the State level.
Incidentally, international adoption agencies have tie-ups with foundling homes in India.
The ethics of when to reveal the truth to adopted children and how to tackle that most decisive moment need to be addressed.
Says Cicily Baby: "It's best to introduce them to the truth even at the tender age of three. The process of revelation can be done through stories, by showing them family pictures and by attending meets held for adoptive parents. The child will accept the concept and will not feel a sense of rage when peers taunt him about his adoptive status''.
Adoption can be made acceptable to kids, parents and society.
* * *
Adapting to life
IT SEEMED straight out of a movie.
"I had been praying for 16 years... .praying that I might see my daughter again,'' said an emotional Raveendran, gazing at the child he had lost when she was six. Time stood still for Anjana when, on the November 3, destiny played its final role in leading the young girl to her biological parents. A local daily had highlighted Anjana's search for her parents.
Her parents fell out with each other almost as soon as she was born. "My father found raising a perpetually crying baby next to impossible. So when I was nine months old, my father entrusted me to this orphanage in Kummannoor,'' says Anjana, recounting the details of her emotional encounter with her parents.
Both parents got married again.
But while Anjana's mother, Leelamma, has not been able to cope up with the rigours of life, her father has done quite well for himself. With a small business of his own, he has a son and a daughter now. It was this daughter who read out to her father the story of a long-lost child looking for her parents. Something clicked in the man's mind. His instincts weren't wrong.
Raveendran had named his daughter Anjana and here was an Anjana from "foreign parts'' looking for her parents. Raveendran contacted the foundling home where he was told that Anjana's mother too had seen the news item and had traced her.
Going down memory lane, Anjana's father told her of her babyhood.
"I used to go to St Joseph's Children's Home to look her up. I would go there with small presents for my child. I would take her out for walks.'' None of which Anjana remembers. The only thing she remembers of her life in the foundling home is the green dress she had, because a picture taken in Belgium had her wearing the dress.''
"That was the dress I bought her,'' said Raveendran when Anjana showed him the photograph. She wanted a pair of new shoes,'' he said. When he came back with the new pair of shoes, she was gone.
"I was told by the director of the orphanage that my child would have a better future. I had nothing to offer her. So I let her go,'' said Anjana's father.
"My mind is at peace now. I am no more the volcano that was ready to erupt any moment. I know I cannot put the clock back,'' says Anjana.
"My mama's tears keep coming back to me. Ever since she learnt that I saw my biological parents, she has been weeping. She can't bear the thought of losing me.'' So it's back to Belgium in January.
""I just wanted to see them, just once. I wouldn't want to upset the balance of their lives now, nor remind them of a past, which is best left buried. For me it was an all-consuming curiosity to know why they did this to me.''
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