Shishur Sevay

Our non-orphan has gone with her mother.  She left smiling, and not looking back.  We had packed her school bag but she only took clothes.  The teachers and a few of the girls cried.  She didn’t.  This is the difference — as she never really wanted to be here;  she always wanted to be with her mother.  The decision came because her mother did not want to stay around long enough to arrange a boarding school.  She had places to go, people to see, and she said she would take her daughter and leave her with her sister.  She would have just walked out the gate, but we said we would drive them to her sister’s.  We wanted to know where they were going.  Whatever non-attachment the girl had, she was our responsibility.  I wanted to know for ourselves, for the other girls, for anyone who asked, where she had gone.

So after lunch, Bijoy, Gibi, Das Uncle (a neighbor and Board member) the child, her mother, and I piled into the car, with me taking pictures of course.  We knew the general area where we were going, as it was not far from where Bubbi, my cow, lives with Bijoy’s wife’s family.  After two hours we passed where Bubbi lives.  Then about fifteen minutes later we turned left off Diamond Harbor Road and I said to Bijoy, "Isn’t this the road with the cows?" meaning where we had gone to look at ‘boy cows" for Bubbi.  But he didn’t recognize it.  The mother had told us this was a very dangerous area, where we could be robbed at any moment.  She clutched my arm as we walked, as she said the car could go no further.  Bijoy stayed with the car.  We walked on.  Gibi worried, wondering where this woman was taking us.  I was relaxed as I’ve been in so many village areas like this — just peaceful people living their lives.

Suddenly though, Gibi stopped and said, "Look, look, the doctor’s house!!!!"  Yes, the house of the cow doctor was in front of us, and his wife was staring at us…. As we were about to pass, I stopped and called inside — as I saw the cows too,  The doctor came out smiling, thrilled to see us again and we told him where we were going, that this was one of our former children — our non-orphan.  So then he joined us, and we promised his wife we would stop on the way back, which we did.  I am often teased that I seem to know everyone, or someone everywhere.  This was an incredible coincidence, as nothing in how this girl came to us would suggest we would be back in this village.

We were well received in the sister’s home, and our girl took off, like a deer set free.  This is all she ever wanted.  When she came they said she was six or seven.  Probably she is 13-14 years old.  We rescued her when she needed rescuing.  It’s a complicated story.  Will she be OK?  Probably not, but there is not much to do about it.  We had little impact on her life.  I’m a realist.  I’ve taken care of girls like this.  I have a 100% failure rate.  When I thought this months ago, others thought i was just being cold-hearted.  It’s a learning process for each of us who tries, and I respect each person who wants to try.  Each teacher had come to me, charmed by this child’s manner, and each tried.  Sometimes there is nothing we can do.

The other girls were sad that she was so happy to leave, but they were also relieved.  Then they asked if we could try to get more of their friends from the government institution.  I said, soon… soon we will try.  I find myself with renewed energy. 

Gibi and I visited a school that takes in street children, teaches them, houses them — a school noted for the quality of its education, and its mixing of paying and non-paying children.  The "but" is that our girl would not be able to visit us, nor us visit her — we would have to cut ties.  The Catholic nun who runs the school could not understand why the mother wouldn’t give up parental rights so she could stay with us.  She also was sure the mother was scamming me, that she wanted something else, like money.  Maybe so, maybe not — she hasn’t asked for money, and if I were her I wouldn’t give up parental rights.  That’s how children end up being adopted out of the country… parents sign them into a school, and poof, they are gone. 

This girl is ours in the sense that we accepted responsibility and she is part of our home, our family, even though she doesn’t quite fit in.  That seems to me all the more reason for her to stay in the lives of our other girls, and for them to stay in hers.  Kids attach, in spite of themselves, and it would not be good for anyone for her to disappear from our lives.

I have a call in to another place, and discovered that one of my teachers here knows the head well, as I do too.  She boasted that he calls her "Auntie" and I said he calls me "Mother." So this week, Mother and Auntie will talk to him about taking our girl.  As of six months ago he wasn’t taking older girls, but apparently that is changing.  And three years ago when he was starting he was also insisting on disconnection with families.  I knew he had started to relax that.  It seems to be the impulse, one I understand well, but it’s not good for the children. 

One of the reasons people do this in taking poor children, or street children, or children of sex workers, is that parents sometimes come back to take children out of the home to put them to work.  Or, they demand money for allowing the children to stay.  I know places that have stopped taking children because of this, that it is too painful to see a child blossom, learn, have a future, and then be pulled out to be a servant, or child bride, or prostitute.  One girl I "sponsored" for several years after I first started educating children here is now working on one of the bridges, lined up with the others…waiting….

Our first summer in India, in 2000, my Calcutta born daughter wrote:

Pulsating pink, luscious lime, tempestuous tangerine

The head-turning spectrum of saris

Mysterious figures

Sitting on the railing like

Crows.

Endless rivers of raven hair

Flowing in braids.

Radiant red lips and bold black eyeliner

Stunning skin of silky sand, mahogany and sienna

Emphasize the vivid hues of cloth.

Waiting for a customer

To ravage the reddest rose

The thorn pricks the skin

Like the shock of beauty lost.

Waiting for a man who will turn

Fairness into business.

This is the ugliness of these women’s lives.

This is the repulsiveness of reality.

                                     Cici Harrison

I have the poem because it was among the papers I brought here when I came.  The poem was published in her high school literary magazine.  The girl who now waits on that bridge spent a lot of time with us.

Cici jokes that she and I have traded lives.  I live in Kolkata; she in NY.  Two days ago the juxtaposition was so clear.  She phoned me as she was walking home at night from band practice.  She plays drums with two bands now.  She was on the cold streets of NY, rain falling, walking from the subway to her apartment.  I was also walking, but I was carrying a bag of vegetables I’d bought from a cart.  So here I was, walking in the baking sun, along a dusty broken road, saying hello as people looked… nodding… smiling… mother daughter, worlds apart and tied together.  Well, life is strange, for sure.

One of our girls is not really an orphan.  She was our first child, and we were lied to.  After that, we only took orphans directly from the government.  She is more like the girls in most "orphanages", namely children whose parents, usually the mother, can’t keep them, for a variety of reasons.  We learned pretty early that she was not an orphan, but on the other hand we rescued her from a situation that was not good at all.

Orphans and non-orphans are different.    This child does not want to be here.  She wants to be with her mother, but her mother did not want her.  We tried unsuccessfully to reach the mother so we could get papers for school.  And we couldn’t get any papers because she is not an orphan.  In India the father is the guardian, no matter what he has done to the mother, and in this case he was brutal in his treatment of the mother.  We have police filings on this now.  The mother has appeared, after more than a year.

I’m writing this in the midst of trying to figure out what we do.  I have many reasons for being unhappy with the mother, but she is a child too.  She was married at 14 in the village.  Her body is scarred from torture.  The daughter of a close relative in that village was burned to death.  Mother-in-law torture of women is common.  Our child’s mother does not want her daughter raised there.

I asked about the current dowry rate.  It is one bicycle, Rs.6000 (about $140), Brass plates, Finger ring for husband, gold bangle and earrings for the woman — what she brings to the marriage.  Often a father decides to sell a large tree for dowry.

A few days ago, at the first visit, our girl was crying, she wanted to go with her mother.  We think she is about 12-13 years.  One of the other girls said, "Why are you crying?  My mother is dead."  Another girl told her that in two months her mother would have to send her out to work as a servant, that she was better off here.  How do these kids mix?  Well, our non-orphan is an outsider, in part because she sets herself aside — and probably wishing at times she were an orphan.  But she has a self-confidence that comes with still having a mother — of not having ridden in a police van to one institution to another, not being locked up with no exit in sight — not that core sense of alone that our orphans have.  It is different.

What will we do now?  We have scheduled a meeting tomorrow with a local elected official.  If we get his endorsement we can legally keep her.  What do we do with the mother?  She is probably more comfortable with the other girls than with her daughter.  They crowd around her and she reaches out to them.  She is staying nearby tonight, and I’ve asked if she wanted to come and help us tomorrow, spend the day with us.  She does… we will see how it goes.  I feel we are in such unchartered waters here.  The "should" would be to send her away and limit visits.  I had offered to pay for schooling if she wanted to take the girl, but she said she cannot give her a good environment.  She must work all day.

I think about even hiring her.  Then I think I must be nuts, that I’m just looking for trouble.  But keeping staff is very hard.  And some people are so jealous of what the children are getting, everything from the good food to the education…

It’s ten pm, and I should go to sleep.  The children have been asleep since nine.  Tomorrow is a school holiday.  It’s a special puja day, with a ritual involving putting water on Shiva’s head… and the objective is to find a good husband.  It is practiced more by the less educated, and ALL our girls are excited to take part.  I was asked if I would allow it.  I said, "Of course, I have 13 husbands to find." 

So, these are the thoughts that rattle in my mind.  Tomorrow will unfold in its own way…. and I try to follow and steer at the same time.  Another haiku from the past:

   Pulling and yielding–

   Always playing tug-of war…

   The seas and the moon.

The title of this post is explicit, because if you are a boy reading you may decide to skip the post.  On the other hand, if you are a boy you may want to know more about a relatively hidden aspect of girls’ lives particularly in India.

Nine o’clock last night, as I was at my computer, three girls tip-toed into the room.  The oldest one was whispering "pad" but I didn’t get it.  I kept asking.  Then I said, "Ah, drawing books!" and I pointed to where the newly purchased books were still piled on the couch.  They all giggled.  More, "Pad, pad…" and I got it and said, "Oh PADS????" and pointed downwards.  I’d been thrown off because only one of the girls gets her "mens" as they seem to say here, and she is usually so shy and secretive about it I didn’t know that the others knew.  Well, nine at night, bedtime for them, and she was out of pads…..

I try to keep a few hidden for such emergencies.  A recent visitor had left behind for us all of her unused toiletries.  They were still in the clear plastic bag she had left.  We went to the cabinet, and by now probably most of the girls were crowded around.  I found four.  I asked again whether they younger ones knew anything about this.  I’m really surprised that they don’t.  They have each seen more than their share of naked bodies, and what they do, but menstruation is so hidden they had no idea.  So, in English, with their now knowing a bit of translation — like blood — I tried to tell them about menstruation.  It was comedy hour as they were truly incredulous!  When i said something about babies inside, and the blood helping babies grow, they were even more incredulous

They noticed more in the bag, three boxes of o.b. tampons.  "Ma, What is this?"  "Oh BaBa!!!!" I said.  The only translation I can think of is "Oy Vey" from my Yiddish speaking grandmother.  "Oh BaBa" is said while hitting my forehead for emphasis — which alone can bring giggles.  So I took out a tampon — and unwrapped it.  It’s really funny looking, or rather bullet looking out of context.  I guessed at the next set of giggles when i tried to show were it goes!  Then we tip-toed into the kitchen, drawing the curtains… appropriate to the conspiratorial nature of our new adventure, and put it in a bowl of water… showing how it expands with water (would -be blood), and the string for pulling it out. The girls weren’t sure about all this at all.  We stealthily went back to the cabinet, and put the bag back….  tampons… for another time.

End of story? No.  Stories I tell, stories I live, have a way of recycling, or of being recycled.  More vignettes…

Johnson & Johnson makes the o.b. tampon, as well as other brands of pads.  Part of my responsibilities as Worldwide Director of Medical Affairs was in the safety of these products, and the consumer and professional education related to "sanitary products."  I actually wrote the tampon safety warnings that became the industry standard worldwide.  I funded research related to safety; I organized international meetings.  I presented this industry position at European Union meetings in Brussels.

But o.b. tampons have their own special story.  They were developed in post war Germany by industrialists who were no longer permitted by law to manufacture munitions or cigarettes.  Having seen an ad in an American magazine for a Tampax tampon, they went about designing one that could be made with the combined machinery of munitions and cigarettes.  Thus the German tampon is made from cotton pressed into a bullet form, and wrapped with a thin covering with the cigarette machinery.  This is probably more than anyone ever wanted to know about tampons.  Of course, the marketing of the o.b. did not say all this.  Instead the young woman doctor, and soon-to-be wife of the industrialist was credited with being the designer, thus the campaign, "Designed by a woman gynecologist."    Ten years ago or so I was talking about tampons at a meeting of the European Commission.  Last night I was unwrapping a tampon to the giggles of my orphan girls.  This is the life I want, the life I missed.  In that life I always felt something was missing.  In this life I have what was missing, and my life is full and blessed, and full of giggles.