Shishur Sevay

To be an orphan child is not good… the people society expects to be responsible for them are gone.  Whatever the reasons, the orphan child is alone and unprotected.

No parents

No relatives

No community

No one to go back to

No one to give them in marriage

The care of orphans in every country is a matter of national policy.  But orphans are orphans within governments too.  Orphans are invisible; they don’t vote; they aren’t politically aligned so they lack advocates.

Parents and communities are natural advocates for their children: their schools, their health, their safety.  In the absence of parents, orphan children become a "burden" to society.   The values and priorities of the society will determine how that "burden" is managed.

• Hungry orphans are not an accident.  They represent a decision not to feed them.
• Illiterate orphans are not an accident.  They represent a decision not to educate them.

Orphans are Prey, forever.

I’m at a crossroad with this blog.  I intended to keep it apolitical, simply reflective, focus on the positive, on the incredible satisfaction and happiness I have, but kind of write as if I’m floating on a cloud.  That is political too, with the hidden agenda to make this look easy… to be able to say, "hey, come on down and open an orphanage in Kolkata!" 

Well, it is wonderful, and it is hard.  I do float on happiness, but at the same time I live a nightmare, one I try not to think about, or write about.  Whenever I’ve gone through bad situations, I’ve always tried to set aside time each day to do something totally unrelated, something to take me out of the pain and fear that go with tough times and situations.  For me, the children provide that.  When things get tough, I get on the floor and play with the kids.  Or, I dance to the video, sometimes Indian dance, sometimes Barney nursery songs.  "If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands…" and I clap and the choto bacchas try to clap, and they giggle because I look funny and they know it and so do I.

The government is threatening to close Shishur Sevay and take away the children.  Actually this has been going on for months.  it is a battle that is consuming.  I used to be afraid, afraid of knocks on the door, police coming to seize the children.  I lay next to the choto bacchas at night, thinking of the emptiness of their lives before us.  I want to cover them all with my body.  I told the government they would take my children, "over my dead body."

I won’t even try to explain the whole situation because it makes no sense.  The battle is over money, and over control of Shishur Sevay.  Because I am a foreigner I cannot be part of the structure of Shishur Sevay.  On paper I am invisible.   I also can’t move my money into Shishur Sevay until the Indian government gives me clearance to do that.  I can’t start that application until our tax exemptions are granted from the tax department.  In the meantime the government is demanding that I put money into the account, which is totally illegal.  And they want board representation to control my money.  Once they have the money they can kick me out.

But there is more, and this part is even more ugly.  I’ve been doing work here for seven years.  Much planning went into what kind of home Gibi and I would create, and who would be here for the children.  We chose love of children, experience, and commitment over "high" credentials. We chose people who would also put their bodies over the children and not let them be taken.  There is a racism, caste ism, and class-ism, at work, not against me, but against Indian people I’ve chosen to trust with my money and my children.

Today was a new round, an unexpected one on a Sunday morning.  We were suddenly called to a meeting, disrupting all our plans with the children  And now the kids know a bit of what is going on, and I feel terrible.   This morning I was in tears, the flesh and blood part to me, the part that bleeds when I am wounded.  I was told again they would take my children if I didn’t turn over my money.  The government had decided, "Mother Teresa gave her house.  You must do the same."  They want the property, Shishur Sevay — the house, the land.

Gibi and I have been knocking on every door we can find.  Our local support is total, which is critical.  The local officials can actually stop any move against us.  Our local police will not knock on our door at night to take the children.  What a terrible way to live… as I said, a nightmare.

But then there is the parallel reality… which is truly wonderful.  I wrote before about Poomina, who was hospitalized with a seizure disorder, and who has encephalopathy — the slow waves that tell us how ill she is…  Well, today her MOTHER came to visit!  This is the story.  Poomina came to us as an orphan through order of the court.  She came under a different name, with no medical history, simply a bottle of seizure medicine, and listed as five years.  She requires constant care and attention.  Her seizure here began when she put her hand in her throat and gagged herself, then couldn’t breathe well, and had the seizure. 

But here is the difficult part of life with Poomina, and why she was given up.  She loves playing with her potty, and eating it, and tossing it…  So she also requires constant soap and water… although we now have her partly potty trained.  Poomina grabs anything in reach, scoots across the floor quickly, and takes apart anything with nuts and bolts.  We have a padded chair for her because sometimes she bangs her head.  We have child-proofed the main room, with everything behind cabinet doors, and all wires high off the floor.  We love her, but she is truly a handful.

In April we took the choto bacchas to the Indian institute of Cerebral Palsy for evaluations and to begin treatments.  Poomina was immediately recognized by the physiotherapist!  In fact he was thrilled to see her.  He used to treat her at another facility were her mother took her for weekly treatments.  He said Poomina seemed well cared for, and he was surprised she had been abandoned.  Thus we started looking for her mother, on the assumption that a family member had probably abandoned Poomina, and that the mother would be relieved to know she is OK.  through the physiotherapist, we found her, and she came today, along with a younger child. 

The visit was beautiful, for everyone.  Poomina played with her mother’s hair, kissed her, but was also happy with the rest of us.  For the mother, it was some peace of mind because she never thought she would see her again.  Unable to care for her, after Poomina got out and spread her potty liberally around the neighborhood, she was sent to live with her grandmother.  The grandmother said she had put her in a good home (actually Poomina came through the police to the government home). 

Poomina’s mother is an educated woman.  Her husband beat her during pregnancy; then there was a difficult birth; then there was the chickenpox we thought was the source of the encephalopathy.  Poomina will be seven in November.  The grandmother said she had given all the medical records when she gave up Poomina, but none were given to us.

Poomina has a younger brother, who came too, and said to his mother, "OK, now let’s take her home."  She also has two older sisters who are studying in residential schools, in Class 7 and Class 4.  They will come to visit over Puja holidays.  Poomina’s mother is doing the best she can.

I wondered what it would be like for the other children to have a mother return.  It was good.  They wanted to keep the younger brother.  i think it was good because each one dreams of her mother finding her, or of finding siblings who they would want to also live with us, be fed, schooled.  So it was a visit that fed their dreams.  it also made clear that mothers are welcome, that children can still stay here, that nothing bad happens. 

By six pm I was exhausted, but didn’t want to nap.  So I took a long walk into Behala, to the narrow crowded sidewalks filled with Puja shoppers, buying gifts for the holidays.  It was mindless activity.  I bought peanuts and lollipops for the girls for their school tiffin.  I saw a knock-off of a Macy’s Bag and bought it for Rs. 25 (about 50 cents).  I stopped at a medical store to get pads for one of the girls.  I chatted with the owner about brands, as I’d been with Johnson & Johnson.  The owner of the shop is a Rotarian, and he talked about the Rotary Club having me talk to them one day.  I talked about the large NRI Rotarian group in New Jersey.  Then I just walked some more, small steps as I was caught in a procession of shoppers, just moving as a mass along the street and the sidewalk. 

I came home, and the children were in singing class.  All was well.  I hugged the little ones, told them about my shopping.  They don’t care that they don’t know English and I don’t care that they can’t talk.  We do body language, and expression, and I always make them laugh.

Monday morning i woke with a terrible headache.  I did not want to move my bones, or walk girls to school.  But i got myself going (with some encouragement of Ganga, whose waking smile makes us all feel happy)… and as soon as we were on the road I was hearing one of their dance songs in my head so we all started singing, and soon my headache was gone, and I was writing lists on my palm, lists of who I next had to call, what I had to write….  New strategies were forming in my mind.  We really need to put out a publication of Gibi’s and my work over the last seven years. 

I’m able to move back and forth… the parallel realities.  I had little time to write today… and now the day is over, the kids will go to sleep shortly.  I found some old National Geographic magazines at Gibi’s and we brought them over for the girls.  They love the pictures.  They ask lots of questions… Ganga is engrossed, and is turning pages.  Our girls are all turning pages. 

One hundred and thirty fingernails… that’s how many I cut in a week.  Every other week I also trim 130 toe nails.  Once a day I also check to make sure fingernails are clean.

I was in medical school a long time ago.  It was rare for women doctors to talk about their children except in whispered tones.  Women doctors weren’t supposed to have children.  We weren’t even supposed to be doctors.  Many of the educational institutions were still influenced by Western European beliefs that we lacked the courage to be doctors, and that our brains were too weak.  Then, if we did have children, our mental activity would sap strength from our ovaries and thus we wouldn’t be able to reproduce well.  We were also told that we were taking the place of a man in medicine, so any time we might spend with our children represented society’s lost investment in our education.  We were symbols of change; we were also just young women trying to find our way, most of us wanting family and profession.

An older woman doctor advised us, "Have your children early when you are busy with training.  They don’t need you then.  Anyone can do those animal things."

So I think of that sometimes, as I am cutting nails, doing those "animal things" — and that I am happy doing those things.  The animal/mother part of me just likes it; it feels good.  It makes me feel grounded, useful, connected to all the children’s fingernails that have been in the past, and all that will come…. my stint on earth. 

As I write, it is a Saturday afternoon, and the children are in class upstairs.  Three of the handicapped children sit in with the others, seeming to understand though they can’t speak.

I struggle with the language of what to call the handicapped and the non-handicapped.  Because now that I am mother to handicapped, I have trouble differentiating the groups as handicapped and "normal."  What do you mean, that my handicapped children are not normal?  The opposite of normal is abnormal.  And my children are NOT abnormal!  They just can’t do what other kids can do, but they aren’t abnormal; they aren’t weird!  Fortunately in our situation there is an age difference, the older and younger.  So we refer to the two groups as "boro baccha" (big children) and "choto baccha" (small children) just like Boro Ma and Choto Ma.  The terms are descriptive, not pejorative.  Choto bacchas need to have their food mashed so they can swallow.  Boro bacchas eat their food un-mashed.  Choto bacchas get fish every day because they are weaker.  And their finger nails are smaller. 

As I go on writing today, the children come from class.  They crowd around, talk about the rest of the day and tomorrow.  They ask if the dance teacher will come (yes), and if they will visit Seema Aunty tomorrow (yes).  Then they wander into the big room playing Ludo, showing pictures to the choto bacchas.  The choto bacchas have an afternoon/evening teacher, and she is with them too… just a play time for 13 children, four staff, and as usual Choto Ma taking part in their games, teaching about sharing, about fairness, about counting the dots on dice and moving pieces along the board, and not cheating.  The girls ask to play carrom and set up the board.  They are missing a red disk, so I take a white one and color it with red crayon.  They are happy.

Two girls are being punished for the weekend.  They are standing in the corners, not allowed to participate in games or watch TV.  They were extremely rude and arrogant to the teachers yesterday, so they lost privileges.  A weekend of punishment is a long time, longer than usual.  I hope we can affect their behavior.  We will keep trying.  We have to.  One of the girls complained that the teacher didn’t help her as much as she helped others.  I said, "This is life.  When you are nasty, people don’t like to help you as much."  Our teachers try very hard, all the time.  They get fed up sometimes. This is life.  Our children need to understand this, as we all do.

I’ve put a dance DVD on the TV.  We don’t have outside TV at all, just VCDs and DVDs.  I have a huge library of Bengali and English discs.  I’ve been collecting these for years.  I also have a lot of nursery discs in Bengali and in English.  Everything is about education and culture, directly or indirectly.  And, of course, there are lots of animal stories, animal sounds, letters and animals, numbers and animals.  Our children love animals.

I had one serious worry about opening the orphanage.  How would i get them to sleep at night?  That really was a symbolic question, because it was about how we would discipline children who had already been beaten, abused, and hardened.  I also got mad at myself for worrying about this…  Some weeks after they came I stopped thinking that was an odd worry.  How DO you discipline children who have already had everything done to them, and who still are not compliant and ready to relinquish all the behaviors that allowed them to survive.

What a range of antics we have all participated in as they battled to cross boundaries and i battled to keep them contained.

On the first night I told them all to be quiet, and they GIGGLED!  This I had not anticipated!  They laughed at me.  They thought I was funny.  It made me double over laughing and they laughed some more.  What do you DO with a room full of giggling girls?  Eventually we all went to sleep.

The battle over vegetables:  Hand feeding of children, even older ones, is part of parenting here.  Most of the girls refused vegetables on principle.  it must be a worldwide phobia, because once confronted, most of them came to love vegetables.  But principle is principle, and this was a testing ground.  I would go around and "catch" whoever was trying to give hers away, or hiding it under the rice, or just being defiant.  One of the girls got desperate and she crawled under the beds to get away.  So, I crawled after her, with my sari sweeping up the floor, under one bed after another as they were all lined up.  And then I poked my head out just where she was.  Yes, everyone was laughing.. kids, Gibi, staff… but she ate her vegetables.

We have a range of "punishments" including restricting tv, games, time out, keeping out of dance class, or not letting them visit other homes.  Actually they dare us to hit them… trying to see if they can push us past our own controls.  They constantly threaten teachers and staff that they will say they were beaten.  But the two times it actually happened, they didn’t tell us because they were protecting the teachers. 

I am the only one they really listen to.  I punish them for not listening to others, but I’m really the only authority they recognize.  I have even pleaded with them to just be bad with me since others get so upset…

Hitting/beating is the big no-no.  I have fired two teachers for grabbing a child so hard her mouth bled.  When one of our girls drew blood in a fight, I had her head shaved. 

Head shaving… and thus the title of this post… A few of the girls have now had their heads shaved for serious offenses.  it’s had a range of good effects, and one unexpected one.  They have become closer to me.  My hair is very thin, a result of chemotherapy eight years ago.  It never really grew back well, and the medicine I continue to take continues to take its toll on my hair.  So, in a rare bit of vanity, I put special "hair growing" oil on my head — when I remember.  The oil was sitting on my table and the girls picked it up and asked about it.  I said it was for growing hair, and offered to put some on their scalps.  Of course they loved it.  And they hugged me, and now every morning before school the punished girls line up for their hair-growing oil.  They have also seen a photo of when I had a bald head, so we are another kind of group, another form of bonding, and a mothering activity each morning that draws us closer.