The Teacher Makes - or Breaks - the Student

I started learning to play the violin when I was ten years old. My first teacher was Mr D. I don’t remember how old he was - or how old I thought he was - but I remember him having a kind face, a hooked nose, and eyes that stared intently into mine as though trying to find some trace of potential in this young wannabe.

Mr D’s first love, musically speaking, was, as I recall it, or as far as I ever knew, the saxophone. I don’t think he got to play it much, because it is basically a jazz instrument and he was teaching in what was essentially - then (and maybe now as well for all I know) - a school for western classical music. I suppose Mr D was a jazz musician at heart. At any rate, he was essentially a winds person. In addition to the sax, he played clarinet, oboe, flute, and piccolo - and those are only the ones I’m aware of. Violin must have been a bit of a step-daughter in his affections. I don’t know whether he was a good violinist or not, or even whether he was good at any of his wind instruments. All I knew about music back then, was from listening to David Oistrakh and some other luminaries on my mother’s old, scratchy, but greatly treasured LPs.

Mr D told me right away that he’d never taught a student from scratch before. The prospect seemed to worry him, but he took me on anyway and taught me how to hold the bow, how to tuck the violin under my chin, how to place my left hand under its neck. (I think I already knew how to read music by then, and also how a scale was constructed.) He soon had me scraping out some rudimentary tunes, probably giving my neighbours and parents headaches, stomach aches, and general indigestion. I don’t suppose I ever had much talent at music, but I brought to it all the determination, dedication, and commitment that my ten-year-old self could muster, and, under Mr D’s patient tutelage, I slowly improved.

After a couple of years - or was it more - I was moved around to other teachers. I used to see Mr D at the school off and on, but then I moved away and didn’t see him for many years. When I did, I didn’t recognize him. The years had not been kind to him and when he greeted me with a guttural “how’s the violin going” it took me a very long moment to map that empty, weathered face to Mr D. It made me feel very sad.

For a short while I had another teacher, Mr G, who was an elderly, white-haired gentleman. He was better known in the Indian music circle, where, I believe, he had achieved a small degree of greatness. In a few short months, he taught me some very valuable lessons in technique and corrected some errors that had crept in over the years. Some time later, I bought my second violin from him - an instrument that served me well, and which I still have and cherish.

Then, for a while, I had a Hungarian teacher. He was young and - I thought then - arrogant and he had no time and patience for the timid adolescent that I was then. He did not intimidate me, rather, he pretty much ignored me. I believe he was himself a pretty good violinist, and that there was much competition in that school for his tutelage, but I did not gain much from it.

Then, after that, I met my nemesis - AM. (Notice the lack of “Mr” with his name.)

AM was a short, stout, dark man, with an oily smile and a manner that I found even then to be best described as obsequious - but only with others. With me, his manner was quite different.

When I first started learning with AM, I thought he was a terribly good violinist. Perhaps I measured him by comparison with myself. By the time I parted with him, I had come to realize that he was a very middling violinist indeed, only a little better than me. I should, then, have credited him with helping me to cover the ground I did in changing my perception of him compared to myself. But AM taught me in a very, very tough way. He taught me by mocking and belittling me. I was terrified of his classes and had to steel myself for the weekly session. He reduced me to tears times without number - I remember struggling to see the notes through the tears that filled my eyes, struggling also not to let the drops form, struggling not to let him see what he was doing to me. I learnt, I improved, I would probably have to say that I became as good as I ever was (and perhaps ever will be) thanks to AM, but inside, my confidence and my joy in music withered and died.

It’s strange to think several years later, when I returned to the city and to the world of music, it was with a chamber group headed by AM that I was most closely associated. I enjoyed the music and the informality of that group, but, though we were more like peers then, AM’s manner of belittling me in public and of making me feel small and scared hadn’t changed. (I was still only in my early 20s.) At last it got so bad, that I told him I could not play with his group any more. To my utmost surprise, he apologised and practically begged me to continue. After that, things improved. I continued to play in that group until I got married and left the city for good.

If I think of which teacher contributed the maximum value to my musical education, it would have to be AM. If I think of which teacher made me feel good about my music and about myself, it would be primarily Mr D, with Mr G as a close second, though I had very few sessions with him. If I were to look for a teacher now, for music or anything else, I would look for one like Mr D - and I’d avoid the AM type of teacher like the plague. Technique can get you only so far - if the teacher can teach excellent technique but kills the joy, the confidence, the love of learning in the student, then he’s taken away far more than he has given… and what he’s taken away might never come back.

I think, almost two decades on, I’m still trying to get back what Mr D and Mr G fostered in me, and what AM so casually destroyed. A small part of me keeps longing to go back to playing the violin, but the voice of AM buried in the deepest, darkest recesses of my memory keeps telling me that I’m no good and that I’ll never be any good at it. What’s it going to take to silence that voice once and for all?

The Lucky Ones Land in the Dungeon

So my former company (and those of you in the industry - but not in the know - might be able to identify it from what follows) has shut down the small (?) team that I belonged to during my tenure there, and put all the 80-odd people in redeployment.

And we all know what that means.

Except there’s this small sub-group that has not been put in the redeployment pool right away. Lucky buggers, right? Yeah. Those guys, who are apparently working on something too critical to be abandoned right away (and a project which is in deep shit to boot), have been put in the dungeon instead.

Dungeon? What’s that?

That’s what I asked when I heard of this the other day.

The dungeon process has apparently always existed in the said organisation, but I was blissfully unaware of it during my three long, dry years there. (Well, naturally, considering I never worked on anything critical and any projects nearby that had to be abandoned were abandoned without missing a beat. But that’s another story.)

So this dungeon process apparently means that the entire team of, say, 20 engineers, gets to work out of one single conference room all day long - and they work extended hours at that. There are scheduled hours (sorry, minutes) for coffee breaks - and probably for toilet breaks as well. (These would have to be staggered, though, to avoid people wasting time standing in queues, or, heaven forbid, getting carried away and actually chatting in neighbouring urinals! - most of the team members being male.) Anyway, miss your designated break, and you’re screwed. It goes without saying that, with 20 of your colleagues and your boss perpetually within spitting distance (literally I mean, not figuratively), personal calls or some leisurely web browsing is out of the question.

So these lucky guys had apparently already spent 2-3 months in this manner when the larger team was summarily disbanded and placed in other groups, or allowed to leave the company with a substantial parting gift. Meanwhile, these guys continue to slog their way through the dungeon. When their project is satisfactorily concluded, then they will be given the redeployment or golden handshake option. Bonuses and promotions? Rewards and recognitions, at least? Sure: “Great job, everyone, thanks for all the hard work. Now you’re fired.” Yup, that’s a great motivator when you want a team to put in long hours in stressful circumstances where they’re trying to complete some work which presumably is going to make (or save) the company a whole lot of money.

Anyway, as they say, it’s a great place to work.

Infertility: Over It At Last

S&S brought their baby to Bangalore last week. S (male) had of course been showing us videos of the little girl practically from the day she was born (and before, truth be told), but it took six weeks for S (female) and the baby to make the journey from her home town to Bangalore. Yesterday, we went and met the happy family. We coo’ed over the tiny bundle of joy, admired her jet black hair, her fat, pouting lips, her little snub nose, commiserated over the mosquito bites and skin rash that were plaguing her. And, of course, we held her, rocked her, Amit sang to her, we watched her sleep, watched her wake up. It was all very peaceful and nice.

I can’t believe how terribly traumatic this would have been for me  a year ago. Now, it was so completely different. I didn’t even think about how she wasn’t ours or how it would have been if she were ours, or if we’d had ours in the same way or even at the same age. I didn’t think any of this, because ours, both of the little rascals, were wandering about right in front of us, admiring the baby, playing with her toys, turning on the TV and climbing on the furniture as though they were right at home here.

For me, adoption wiped away, if not all, then at least 95% of the pain of infertility. And that’s saying a LOT.

The Kite Runner

Christina gifted me this book and I have to say, Thanks a Lot, Chris!

(If you haven’t read the book, none of what follows is going to make much sense. Also, if you intend to read it, you probably don’t want to know all of this; there are spoilers.)

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I loved the book… but I’m glad I read it. I really enjoyed the beginning, the Kabul parts. I think they created an environment that makes you feel like you’ve been to the place. Being Indian, there were a lot of things one could relate to - servants who stayed in the family for generations and seemed almost like friends, only you didn’t play with them when your social peers were around; kites; kabobs; some of the words and concepts, like Zendagi, khastegari…

I also thought that the whole tragic episode, the subsequent actions of the protagonist, and the deep, convoluted guilt trip were very well done. That reminded me, in a parallel way, of Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, which I read about a hundred years ago. There, too, an abiding sense of guilt and even more, of shame, shaped the course of the protagonist’s future life and actions.

What I didn’t like - the whole America episode. It was unnecessarily detailed. All that detail was irrelevant - only Soraya need have been explained - and the whole could have been summarized in one page, or at most two. Unlike the Kabul part, which created such a wonderful atmosphere that I almost fell in love with the city sight unseen, the America part created no atmosphere at all, despite a feeble attempt to at least convey a flea market scene. It fell as flat as though the author had never even been to the US (which is patently untrue), while the Kabul parts rang true as though the author had spent his childhood years growing up there (which, in fact I think he did).

Then, the redemption theme - I thought it went very well… up to a point. For me, the entire adoption bit and the culmination of all the problems with the final kite flying/kite running incident was completely redundant. It seemed to me like a put-on attempt to tie up all the loose ends, to connect everything in the beginning with everything that comes later. I would have been happier if the story had ended with Amir reaching Peshawar or Islamabad safe and sound, and with the visa part working out as it finally did, without any undue complicatioins. A “happily-ever-after” ending, in other words. Or, even better, I’d have been happy with it ending with Amir walking out of that house in Kabul, half-dead, and falling into Farid’s arms. Not quite happily-ever-after, but tending towards it, leaving the details unsaid.

And what I really don’t understand is that, even if Amir had been stupid enough to provoke that suicide attempt, how come he wasn’t later haunted by the guilt of that action? That, too, was due to his own stupidity after all.

So all in all, I would not say that I absolutely loved the book, but I’m glad I read it, and I thought the first part was really, really good. Would I want to read A Thousand Splendid Suns? Probably, but not in a desperate huryy.

I’ve Got to Stop the Food Wars

I know I shouldn’t but I still keep doing it: I keep fighting with the twins about food.

The parenting books - by western authors, by the way - all say how you should let the child decide how much of what food they to eat. They won’t starve themselves, and they won’t binge on one item and ignore another - over the long run, they will select a healthy diet. (This, provided you offer them healthy options of course, not an option between veggies on one hand and chips and chocolates on the other.)

I do believe I should do this, and I’m trying very hard to do it. I try not to worry if they opt to skip a meal, or eat only curd at dinner, or only drink milk for breakfast. Yet, it’s a losing battle: despite my best efforts, I all-too-often end up forcing food on them, fighting them to get one more morsel down their gullets, holding their arms, ignoring their wails.

Why do I do this? I feel lousy afterwards. I do believe that having a happy and relaxed meal is going to do them more good than those few extra mouthfuls I force on them. I can even hear a little voice telling me this when I’m force-feeding them - why don’t I listen?

To answer my own question, I think there are several reasons. One is that I’ve got the food ready and it is really frustrating to have it spurned.

Another is that I hate to see food wasted, but, since the kids’ food is full of delicious and fatty things including a generous dollop of butter, Amit and I generally don’t eat it.

And then, there’s ego - stupid, petty, childish, despicable ego: “If I’m telling you to eat this, you’re jolly well going to eat this, or else!”

Yet another is that I don’t want to feel that I gave up feeding them in a hurry (being impatient as I am) and thus deprived them of food at every meal. This is compounded by the pressure I’ve been under from the start to ensure that the kids put on weight, because, from the day we got them, doctors have said that they are way underweight for their age - around the 5th percentile compared to normal Indian kids. So, I’ve had this sort of Job No. 1 task of feeding them well and getting them to gain weight - in order to win doctors’ approval, if nothing else.

Still another is that I am, after all, Indian, and in India it is the done thing to keep stuffing food into your children to make them nice and plump; all good mothers must do this and if you don’t and if your children are not nice and plump, you must be a horrid, callous mother who starves her kids. If you were to be heard in public telling your kids, “eat it if you want it, if you don’t want it, don’t eat,” there would be gasps of horror all around and heads would swivel and eyes accuse you of cruelty that make Genghis Khan pale in comparison.

I don’t buy into this philosophy, of course, but at a subliminal level, it is there.

What earns you approving nods from the extended family in India is one of two feeding strategies. You either force-feed your kids by laying them down in your lap, gripping their hands and legs tightly, and dropping food straight into their throats - if they are howling, that helps because then their maws are wide open; or, you run around behind them distracting them with toys, playmates, music, TV or whatever, and sneaking the food in when they are not paying attention. (These strategies tend to merge as kids grow older, but the general philosophy remains intact - stuff your kids till they are fit to burst, or you’re not a good mother.)

I don’t do either of these, but I do demand that they sit still and focus on the food and cut out any squirming, screaming, playing with the food etc. It is unrealistic to expect a child to sit quietly and eat her food with dedication and decorum… but that’s what I aim for. I know, it’s an exercise in futility, it’s doomed from the start. They squirm and scream and giggle and play and I get impatient, irritated, frustrated, and plain mad. That’s when I start cajoling or shouting and simultaneously thrusting food down their gullets, when what I should do is to realize that they’re done with food and ready to go back to playing.

Easier said than done.

It doesn’t help, of course, that I’ve been feeding them the last 30-odd meals on the trot without a single break and am therefore running increasingly short on patience.

But, all the reasons and excuses notwithstanding, I’m resolving, here, publicly, right now, that I’m going to stop doing this once and for all, and am going to let them eat as much or as little as they want and am not going to force, persuade, cajole, plead, entice, encourage, or in any way try to increase their food intake ever again. Unless it’s medicine. Amen.

Caged Tiger Growling

Before we got the twins, Amit traveled about once a quarter. Now that we have twins, he travels once a month. I wish it had been the other way round.

Because of our insistence - joint and individual - to raise the kids ourselves, at least in these early days, we tend to lead a “relay-race” existence these days. As soon as one gets home, the other goes out, or, occasionally, is at home but busy with something and not to be disturbed.

The problem is that, when Amit is out of town, I don’t get a break of any kind. Of course, I get on the computer in the afternoons, while the kids sleep or keep themselves busy; and I get a few hours for myself in the evening after they’ve gone to bed; but the point is, being entirely home-bound, there’s only so far you can go with books, TV and computer. After a point, you feel like you’d do anything to just get out of the house for a bit. This time, as before, I’ve developed a serious pain in the neck/back due to too much time spent with the computer, TV and books. I need some exercise, I need to stretch, even to hyperventilate (just a little). I miss tennis, and I miss my evening walks, even if it is often just a quick trip to the neighbourhood shops for groceries and stuff. I do manage to pick up groceries on my way back from the park with the kids - but I need to stretch my legs and relax my mind, and it’s difficult to do that with the kids in tow.

The kids are entertaining enough in their own way, but 24×7 becomes a little monotonous I have to admit. Should I feel guilty about feeling this way? I do, a little, but that doesn’t bother me too much. What bothers me is: What, if anything, can I do to change things?

I obviously can’t get Amit to travel less. I wish he would travel less, but it’s not in my control. Since he is obviously the alternative baby-sitter of choice, I suppose I have to look beyond that and consider other baby-sitters. I’ve known for a while that it’s the only option, but I am still not altogether convinced that it’s what I want to do. If there were only a creche nearby where I could drop off the kids for an hour or two in the evening… 6.30 to 8.00 would do it. That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Sometimes I think that getting a job, even a work-from-home job, would solve the problem, but then I realize this is confused thinking. A job might give more focus to the time I spend on the computer or might replace TV and books with work… but it won’t get me out of the house unless I have a babysitter, so it brings me right back to Problem Number One.

I’m happy to be a stay-at-home mom - or at least that’s what I keep saying - but did I really sign-up for 24×7? I thought there were going to be two parents involved here: Isn’t there supposed to be some help from the father in question as well? Or should I bow to the inevitable and leave my children in charge of an ayah for a couple of hours a day?

Good Girl, Bad Girl

These are the standard phrases we use to praise or admonish the twins. In doing so, I’m sure we’re no different from millions of parents around the world.

I’ve read in parenting books that rather than saying “bad girl,” one should say “that’s a bad thing to do” to more accurately convey that it is the action that’s bad, not the person. Obviously, the same does not hold true for the “good girl” situations.

Earlier, when I studied Psychology, I read about unconditional love, which, as I understand and recall it, is simply reassuring a child that no matter what you do and how angry I might be, I will always love you. The child should never have to fear or be insecure on that account.

Both things, slightly confusingly related and even slightly contradictory as they are, make sense to me. I have to admit that I don’t always - or even often - practise the former; though I wish I could, it’s just too cumbersome a statement in the heat of the moment. I believe (think) that, though I say “no” and “don’t” about a million times a day, I don’t say “bad girl” all that often and I do say “good girl” just as often or more.

I like to think too, that they somehow know when I scold them, that I’m only scolding them for that particular action and that there’s no threat to my overall affection for them, as well as no sweeping judgement on their general nature. My basis for this assumption is the belief that they are still arriving at an understanding of words based on context and non-verbal communication. Therefore, “bad girl” = “doing that  is bad” is not too much of an intuitive leap for them, while it (”bad girl”) is quite distinct from “I don’t love you” or “I won’t love you if you do that”. Likewise, I believe that “mama scolds me but still loves me” is something they understand without the use of those exact words.

But, I’m no child psychologist; I could be wrong.

What shocked me recently, though, was two similar but separate incidents of people asking my daughters, “Are you a good girl or a bad girl?”

One enquirer was herself a child, maybe 6 years old. The other was an unrelated child-minder.

Wow! Do people normally go around making kids make these value judgements about themselves? Obviously the child had been exposed to this question either first- or second-hand, she could hardly have thought up that line of questioning herself, unaided. What’s worse, she proceeded to label Mrini “bad girl” (and Tara “good girl”) just because Mrini wouldn’t go to her (and Tara did). She was just a child, and somebody else’s at that, so I didn’t say anything, but in my mind, that is no kind of basis for praising or admonishing a child. (As it happened, Mrini didn’t care, she smiled and clung to me.)

The child-minder said her ward, when so questioned, always answered, “Bad girl.” She - and the child’s mother - found this amusing. I think it’s terrible! From the tender age of 18 months, that child has an image of herself that is negative, and even if she doesn’t understand the implications of those words yet, she soon will. And meanwhile, her caregivers aren’t even trying to fix that verbal self-perception! I’m sure they love her and hug her and praise her as well, but the fact remains that her predominanat recollection is of the words “bad girl” - and they find this funny!

As of now, the twins don’t even properly respond to the question, “What is your name?” (they both say something approximating Mrini), so naturally they have no answer to the good girl, bad girl question yet. When they do, I hope that in actions, words, and inner belief, the answer will be good.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

I’m not sure if my account of our trip to Pondicherry to file papers gave the impression of quite how rushed and hectic it was, but it really was. Amit was extremely tense about the whole process going off smoothly and without any further delays. I was only worried about managing the kids and keeping them happily occupied.

Our lawyer, for some reason, thought she was doing us a great favour by asking us to come and sign all the papers at her office on the morning of the filing. She apparently thought that the only alternative to this procedure was for us to come a day earlier, thus she was showing us maximum consideration by sparing us a day. She did not consider that we might actually have much preferred to arrive a day earlier and finish the work at leisure instead of being under such pressure. She also did not appear to have heard of or thought about the possibility of sending us either the actual documents or a draft of those documents by fax, snail mail or email beforehand, so that we could read or even sign the papers well before the date of filing.

Naturally, there were pages and pages of stuff to be signed by each of us, along with filling in our names and addresses in a couple of places. By the time it was all done, it looked like we hardly had enough time to get to the courthouse before 10 a.m. - and if we were late, that was one day wasted.

Amit asked the lawyer for a copy of the papers we were signing, and she flatly refused. Obviously, there was no time to make a copy at that time (it’s not as though her office even had a copying machine), but that was not her main reason for refusing. She said it was not required for us to have a copy at all!

How can that be? I’m signing legal stuff on stamp paper stating something or other, shouldn’t I at least have a copy of whatever it is I’m filing?

Amit, being nothing if not stubborn, insisted on photographing the documents with his cellphone, which he managed to do without making it unduly late. I tried to hastily scan through the pages - I wanted to be sure there wasn’t a line in there somewhere saying that we agreed to make over all our worldly possessions to the said lawyer, so help me god.

So, in some ways it wasn’t surprising that we missed it. What did surprise me was that Amit actually read the photographic copy of the entire document word for word during the drive back, and he still missed it (and he’s the sort who’ll catch “Foster Care” spelt as “Faster Care”).

It’s not as though what we missed was a tiny little typo error - no, there it was plainly stated that I, the joint petitioner, was currently employed with such-and-such company and drawing a monthly gross salary amounting to exactly so much. (And therefore financially empowered to look after the said children.)

This, on a petition dated 9th April, 2008.

When we had submitted the entire set of documents including our payslips to the adoption coordinating agency in Bangalore way back in April 2007, I was gainfully employed. By the time we got the twins home in September 2007, I wasn’t. This statement - which, by the way, occurred twice - in April 2008 was plain wrong, by well over six months.

The penny quietly dropped into my head sometime on Thursday morning, but even then I didn’t pay it much attention. It wasn’t until I discussed the matter with Amit late on Thursday evening that we both realized just how serious it could be. HOW could we have missed this? We both knew we had read this in the document, it had just not occurred to us that it was no longer true.

After much serious discussion and several frantic phonecalls, remedial measures were put in place. Our lawyer, who was plainly peeved at us not having pointed this out that morning (HOW??), agreed to stop the file in court, and one of us would have to dash down to Pondicherry, legally withdraw the file, make the corrections, initial them, and “appear” (if you can call it that) before the judge to re-submit. The only saving grace was that only one of us need go, which meant that Amit would have to do the dashing, while the kids and I stayed home.

Strangely Estranged

When we took the twins back to Pondicherry last week, we had every intention of making a short visit to the adoption agency (that is, the orphanage). We had some romantic notion that those people would like to see the twins, see how they’re getting on. We thought it might be nice for the twins too. Not that they’d remember anything of that place now (after six months away, they wouldn’t, would they?) but if we did take them there for occasional visits over the course of the years, they would have something to latch on to when they began to understand about adoption. Everything I had read about adoption spoke of the wisdom of doing this, and some of the personal experiences I found on the Net also spoke of building a sort of relationship with the institution or organization which kept the adopted children prior to their adoption. And our kids, after all, had spent the entire first year of their lives in that place with those people - surely that was something worth building on?

We had had intermittent contact with the agency over the past few months, mainly to do with paperwork concerning the adoption. Since we spoke no Tamil, we had mainly communicated with Sister M - the head honcho there - and Sister P, who was the only other person there fluent in English. On our first visit to the agency six-plus months ago, everyone had been very warm and welcoming. We had been a little apprehensive, but we faced no trouble at all in taking the kids out, getting their medical tests done, and finally driving away with them.

What did strike me as odd then, and left a mildly unpleasant taste in the mouth, was that they - that is, I suppose, primarily Sister M - seemed a little too eager to “get rid of” the twins. “Get rid of” is exactly the feeling I got - though I tried to attribute it to a more charitable emotion of wishing the twins a good home and family. An alternative but still understandable motivation could have been financial: charitable organisations are always in need of money, and getting rid of the twins benefited them significantly monetarily. Still, the eagerness, even anxiousness, to get us to take charge of the kids was vaguely reminiscent of a shopkeeper trying to sell a flawed product at an exorbitant price to over-eager, innocent customers.

Well, these particular customers were happy to take charge of these particular “products” that didn’t appear - medically or otherwise - to be flawed, so I tried to ignore the feeling of being duped… and what with being so busy and happy with the girls, it was quite easy after all.

Till now. When we called the agency to tell them we’d be dropping in during our visit to Pondicherry, the response was surprising: “Oh, there’s no need for that,” said Sister P sweetly, “you’ll be meeting Sister M at the courthouse.”

Sure enough, we did meet Sister M at the courthouse. Now, Sister M, being the head honcho and all, was, I suppose, never the one to actually manage the kids on a day-to-day basis. So she may not have had the pseudo-parent kind of bond with them that the actual care-givers may have had. Still, they had been her charges for one year, right in their infancy… she had even selected their original names herself, or so she had told us earlier… Both of us expected her to show some little interest in the twins - for decency’s sake if nothing else. I expected some comment on how good they were looking, how much they had grown, perhaps how they had put on so much weight, or that they were generally looking healthy and happy. I’m sure any parent would feel happy to hear any of these things, but none so much as an adopted parent, especially if it came from the person in Sister M’s position.

All we got, instead, was a curt question: “Are you happy?” My response was that the more relevant question would have been whether the twins were happy - this was brushed aside almost as though it were completely irrelevant. Sister M made no effort to communicate with the kids, far less hold them or cuddle them, merely made some polite conversation with us for all of two minutes and then turned away from us.

Well!

Discussing the matter later, Amit suggested that perhaps since she dealt with adoption all the time, she was inured to such emotional matters as how the kids were faring in their new homes, or whether they were blossoming or not. Perhaps. Who am I to judge or even to presume to understand what her life is like and what her emotions are? Perhaps for those who are in the business, ultimately these children are merely commodities, sold off just like material goods, to make their “owners” happy. But, I couldn’t understand it and I couldn’t feel at peace about it. I wish we could have had a warmer reception from the agency on our return visit, I wish we could have felt like it was a place the kids could revisit over the years.

Perhaps, for those women who actually do all the work for the kids there, it would have been a different story, and there would have been some interest or happiness in seeing the twins again. But without any encouragement from Sister M, it looks unlikely that we will ever meet them to see the interest - or, perchance, the indifference - on their faces.

Of course, our kids lost their biological parents. Now it seems like they’ve also lost their first “adopted” (to use the term loosely) parents, and with it, all connection to their lives prior to coming home to us. And that’s sad.

Adoption Update - Filing the Papers in Court

We finally took the first step to legalising the adoption - filing the papers in court in Pondicherry.

Pondicherry is not an easy place to get to, if you’re traveling with little kids. The easiest would be to take an overnight train to Chennai, and from there a car (or bus) to Pondy. But, we had to be in Pondy by 9, and preferrably looking quite presentable by then, so that didn’t work for us this time.

Pondy itself also does have a railway station, but this is described by Lonely Planet as being of more use to the local goats than to people, so it didn’t appear very confidence-inspiring. There’s no airport at Pondy, so going by air would still necessitate changing to “surface” transport at Chennai.

I had optimistically booked 4 seats on the overnight bus to Pondy - but the sleeper reached Pondy too late, so it was a normal Volvo “seater” bus. The idea of holding the girls in our laps for the entire duration of the journey was frankly scary - I’m sure my lap-load would have slipped off my lap at some point.

So after way too much discussion and consideration, we decided that the best thing to do would be to hire a driver-driven cab and drive both ways.

Still, we made this decision at 2 p.m. And we had to leave by 4 in order to have something of the night left by the time we got there.

Now if you’re wondering why we left it so late to organize things, I have to add that it wasn’t entirely up to us. The lawyers in Pondicherry were on strike (no clue why) on Tuesday, and our lawyer said she would let us know by afternoon whether the strike would carry on the next day or not.

So, having received the all-clear from her around 1 p.m., we rushed around organizing and packing and were on our way by about 5.30.

The drive passed uneventfully and we reached Pondy at midnight. Then, it turned out there was a problem with the papers of the vehicle we were in, and at the Pondy border they refused to give our driver a permit for the vehicle. They allowed us to go into Pondy, at the risk of being caught and fined at any point. Great.

The next morning we had to be at the lawyer’s office by 9 a.m. Amit insisted on taking an auto, though it was only a short drive away. After signing a whole lot of paperwork, we got into the lawyer’s car and went to the family court, reaching there a little before 10. Apparently there’s only one Judge at this court and he sits at 10. After waiting in a hot, crowded, small hall outside the hot, crowded, small room that was the court, the Judge came, a bell rang, our case was submitted, and Amit was called. By the time he could push his way through the crowd to the front of the room, with me tagging along a little behind him, it was time to turn around and head back out. Our appearance was done! The Judge hardly glanced at him and wouldn’t even have been aware of my existence. If we had sent in someone off the street to appear as us, he wouldn’t have noticed.

We waited for our lawyer to return. Waited, waited, and waited some more. The weather was hot and sultry and the kids finally turned cranky. From the window in the hall, I could look across the road to the endless sea thrashing against the rocks on Pondy’s Marine Drive. Unfortunately there’s no beach here - only a long, straight stretch of coast, with a black, rocky shore, and a higher, sandy promenade, and the road right next to it. No trees, no shacks, no shade. Still, at least it was out and away from this crowded hall - it certainly couldn’t be any worse than being indoors.

I took the girls and crossed the road, leaving Amit to wait for the lawyer and call me if I were needed. At first, the girls were delighted to be on the “beach” - they sat in the sand and played quietly by themselves. After about 20 minutes, Tara suddenly started howling and wouldn’t stop. I decided she must be hot and thirsty - we had forgotten the water bottle in the hotel in the last-minute rush to leave. Walking down that beach and crossing the road to find a snack bar that sold water was really difficult with one girl wailing and the other wandering around smiling and picking up dirty ice-cream sticks. Once I got some water into all three of us, I saw Amit standing across the road, scowling, cellphone in one hand - my phone was ringing, but my hands were too full to permit me to answer it.

A little after 11, we were back in our hotel room, cooling off. By 1.30, we were all bathed and fed and ready to leave on the long drive back. Seven hours later, we were home. Though it had been a hectic trip, I have to say that on the whole the girls handled it very well, apart from the one hour at the courthouse. It was probably the two of us who were more tired out by it.

The next trip will be after a month or so.