Stories of success

Sometimes the universe really does its thing well.

As you may or may not have been able to tell from recent rants, things in the development sector out here haven't been the easiest the last little while. Although Deepa continues to improve (she's started copying words more consistently, the little trooper), it somehow always seems so futile.

How many kids actually get out of this place? What's the point in teaching a little blind girl how to talk when she's never going to have a chance to go to school or have a job?

Because that's the norm for disabled people here: An institution. The street. Those are the options.
So what's the point?

And then, two days ago, something happened to shift my perspective...

...again

As I was climbing the stairs to work on Tuesday morning, I passed a young couple sitting in the hallway.

"Bonjour" the young girl said with a smile.

Surprised to hear French from the mouth of someone so clearly Indian, I smiled and returned the greeting, continuing on my way up the stairs to the crashes, clangs and screams of forty little bundles of joy.

A few moments later, as I sat saying hello to the kids, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the same girl.

"Excuse me, do you speak French?" she asked shyly.

Sometimes being bilingual realllllly comes in handy. The girl quickly explained to me that she was afraid something had been lost in translation.

"I think they think I want to adopt a child. But that's not it at all. I was adopted from this place when I was 8 years old. This is my first time back in India. I just arrived and I'm hoping the people here can help me find the village of my birth. I don't know anything about my childhood. Can you tell them that?"

Please remember that this is all happening at 8 in the morning on a Tuesday. That's a serious start to the week.

Turns out this beautiful young woman had literally JUST landed in India. She and her fiancee had flown from Switzerland, where she grew up, and landed in Kolkata an hour before I met them.

I suddenly found myself following this young couple through the orphanage, and bearing witness to an incredibly emotional experience.

"I remember the bars on the cribs were painted green, not yellow." quietly, as we walked through the dormitory lined with dozens of beds.

"Did there used to be a park here? I remember my friend and I used to play on the swings together. We loved the park." tentatively, as we sat in the courtyard and listened to sounds of children playing beside us.

As memories came flooding back, I tentatively translated the girls words from French to English, and the sister's responses from English to French.

Slowly, as we toured the rooms of her childhood, her story came out.
It wasn't a nice one.

As a child, a train accident stole her sister's life and one of her own legs, leaving her an invalid in rural India. Not a good start.

Later, her mother committed suicide.

This left the little girl to survive in a small village with no one for company but her abusive, alcoholic father. Alone and afraid she fled.

"I remember taking the train for a really long time. And I remember a train station. And a sister.

The sister took care of me. She brought me here to Kolkata. Later, I remember a plane ride. I met my adoptive mother for the first time when I landed in Switzerland. I was 8 1/2 years old".

Snippets of memories, with no names, no dates, no faces to attach to any of them. Imagine, an entire childhood unknown. Growing up in a world just like yours and mine, where birthdays and hometowns and childhood friends and family picnics are so important. Imagine living in that when you don't know your real date of birth. You don't know where you born. Everything before the age of 9 is a haze, and there's nobody who can make the image any clearer.

Sadly, the girl's file, thin and faded with time, brought us no answers. The only name in the file was the girl's own. The only date of birth was the one she had always used, one which had been chosen for her when she was rescued from the streets. The village listed as her birthplace was the village where she was found not born.

Saddened by her inability to shed light on the past, the Sister turned to me.

"please tell her I'm so sorry we cannot help more"

the translation was met with a smile.

"There's nothing to apologize for. Without these people, I never would have had the life I did. I owe them everything" the girl said, her voice quavering ever so slightly.

No past. But a future. Some would say that's a fair trade.



I don't know why that girl said hello to me in the stairwell. I don't know why I responded. But I do know that I needed this experience.

I needed to be reminded that good things do happen here. That there are success stories and fresh starts amidst the dirt and the noise and the chaos.

That amidst all the impossibilities of Kolkata, some things are still possible.