Shishur Sevay

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.

Another haiku:

The beaten believe

Oases are mirages.

They build their cocoons.

I gave this one to the English/Bengali teacher this morning.  She talked about it with the children, explained the words — an exercise of many meanings…

I look for ways to tell the girls I understand them, difficult at times without a shared language.  I also look for ways for the teachers to understand their behaviors, their mistrust, their defiance at times.  And I look for answers as to why we do not beat them, when it seems to some that a good beating would change behavior.  The haiku, the use of literature is also an exercise in shifting from the concrete to the abstract, from the literal cocoon, to ways they protect themselves.

Cocoons are easy for them to understand as we visited Science City last week and saw a house full of cocoons.  Oases are easy for them to understand as we have been watching Ten Commandments, and they saw the oasis in the desert.   Mirages — there is actually a Bengali word which I’ve forgotten, but it was described to me as when you think you see the sea before you and you run towards it, and it isn ‘t there. 

I’m told the girls really enjoyed trying to understand the haiku.  Two of the girls who often are in trouble took note, and did not try to doze through the class, as they sometimes do.  We try and try, and give them time, time in a place where they are not beaten, literally or figuratively.  We all work very hard psychologically.  They are at work constantly trying to find "evidence" that we will betray them; they challenge us to beat them; they relax, have fun, go on guard again.   — For our part, we work hard too, because to be honest, our agenda is to change them — to change the direction in which their lives were going.  And we want them to want to change!  We want bad language to stop, fighting to stop, moodiness to stop — harps and bulldozers, Heaven and Earth.  It is our dance, and we hope that love will help, ours and theirs.

I really wish I could blog more, mostly because I think about what I want to write, and then the time disappears.  I feel like I’m living in the midst of a miracle.  I look at the house full of children, and think about the empty broken down place we bought almost two years ago.  I look at the kids, and think about what their lives were like before they came to us.  I look at all the people here, teaching, taking care of kids, cooking, cleaning — all this life and energy that didn’t exist here before.  And I look at my life now, so full — my life that seemed so empty just a few years ago.

It is not a sacrifice for me to be here.  I have created what I needed too.  This is my home now, filled with all these children, and all this life.  Just a few years ago I had a beautiful house in New Jersey, but it was empty.  My kids were out of the nest.  We talked on the phone; they came to stay sometimes, but their lives were elsewhere.  And, my husband had left me for another woman’s nest.  I kept looking at the New Jersey house, wanting it filled with children I was already sponsoring in schools in Kolkata.  I had to face that they were not coming to New Jersey, so it was pointless to hold onto the house.  And they were not orphans.  They had families, ones I was helping also, but no one was coming to fill my house. 

I sold the house and moved to a rented apartment… a first downsizing — thinking I would be back and forth.  But in that next year, I spent more time in India than in New York.  And when I was in New York, I led a fairly solitary life.  I walked my dog (whom I truly loved, and still love) in Central Park; I saw my kids when they were free; I walked along Broadway noticing babies and old people — the baby nannies, and the old people nannies, strangers called in to take old ladies and old men for walks, help them buy groceries, be their companions.  The babies and old people were white; the nannies were brown, off-white, Hispanic, Asian – paid companions, caretakers, pretending this wasn’t "just a job."    In India I felt relevant, needed, contemporary.  In the US I felt more related to who I was in the past, but not in the present.  My life lacked the kind of meaning that had always sustained me.   At seventeen I’d written a school essay about being touched by the plight of Korean orphans.. work undone on my to do list.

I’ve written here before about hearing the voices of the girls calling to me from a dumpster, calling for me to free them.  I think now that was also a call, a voice, to free myself.

I did a lot of writing in that time, the poetry and haiku that continue to define my life, here too.

One haiku..

The invitation

Offered a new assignment,

Move Heaven and Earth.

That sounds a bit like opening an orphanage in Kolkata, moving Heaven and Earth. 

RSVP:  Accepted