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The other mother
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There are people who parent abandoned babies selflessly. Tomorrow is Mother's Day
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QUIET COMFORT Some orphaned babies are nurtured till adulthood bytheir caregivers PHOTO: MAHESH HARILAL
On a quiet, balmy night, two unknown hands — the only hands the infant has ever known since his entry into the world a few hours ago — abandon the little one at the gates of the Missionaries of Charity's Nirmala Shishu Bhawan in Lingarajapuram.
The next morning, the sisters at the missionary, in true spirit of Mother Teresa's teaching, embrace the forsaken one.
And so begins a life of love, of open gates and arms, of laughter in the home's roomy courtyard and music in the children's recreational rooms.
The Mission that has been in Bangalore for over 25 years now, houses 79 such children — some thrown on the street, some left quietly at church steps, others abandoned in hospitals because they were mentally or physically challenged or had sores all over their body, and a few brought in by good samaritans.
On the eve of Mother's Day tomorrow, I spoke to a caregiver, one of those nameless, faceless women — some of them nuns — who mother these babies, nurturing them from feeding bottle to their graduation, sitting up through nights of fevers and measles, trips to doctors and hospitals, making these young ones their own. They also let them go, and see many of them being adopted and adapting successfully to their new homes and parents.
Jaya Mary is 50 and is spending her seventh year at the Shishu Bhawan. "I love these children like my own. I didn't have children for 10 years after my marriage, and then finally I had a daughter. That's why I just simply love children," she says with a wide, warm smile.
Having worked in a nursery school in Pondicherry and later having been a supervisor for an adult education programme, Jaya Mary worked in a factory before she decided to care for the children at the behest of her priest.
She works at the Shishu Bhawan in day and night shifts on alternate weeks, bathing the infants, changing their nappies, giving them their feeds, tending to the sick ones, giving the older ones their Cerelac and Horlicks. More than anything else, she holds them close, talks to them, much as a mother would, plays with them, and loves them selflessly. Jaya Mary's daughter, who's now in college, also visits often to change nappies and put bindis on the babies.
Understandably, this mother figure at the Bhawan cannot comprehend how a woman can abandon her child. "I just cannot imagine, ma," says Jaya Mary in crisp English, "So many people pray in temples and churches begging for babies. I don't understand what kind of hearts these mothers have, to leave the babies just like that, after carrying them for nine months."
Often, as she walks in between the cradles at the Bhawan where a 20-day-old infant whimpers for attention amongst a babble of cries and laughter, she rationalises that it must have been a young unwed college kid forced to have the baby, whom no one agreed to marry. Or a poor couple who couldn't afford the care of their newborn crippled child. Or someone who had one baby too many and couldn't afford one more. "At least this is better. They don't kill their children, no, like many others do? I feel sad that they have to live here despite having a mother in this world," she says gesturing at the cradles, but adds cheerfully, "But here they get many mothers!"
Jaya Mary's daughter celebrates Mother's Day every year by buying her a chain or a sari with pocket money she saves. But Jaya Mary's greatest joy perhaps is when every child in the Shishu Bhawan calls her `Amma'.
BHUMIKA K.
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Mangalore
Pondicherry
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
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