Adoption Update: Return to Pondicherry

In case you thought we were done with the adoption legalities… think again. We still have to file for adoption under HAMA – the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act. For this, we first have to get all the original documents back from the Family Court, which granted us guardianship under GAWA (the Guardians And Wards Act), and then we have to file for adoption in the Civil Court.

We could have done this sooner, but had been advised by our lawyer to wait, due to the long backlog of HAMA cases in the Pondicherry Civil Court. Now, it seems, the backlog has cleared a bit and we can file our petition.

First, to get the original documents back. Until recently, either one petitioner (parent, that’s us) could go to petition the court to return the original documents to us. Now, just right now, they need both parents. They don’t need the kids, luckily, but guess what? Where we go, our kids go. We don’t have anyone to leave them with.

It’s not as if it’s a matter of a few hours – driving to Pondicherry and back itself means about 12-14 hours on the road. And apparently petitioning the court on one day means that we might actually get the documents only the next day, or possibly the day after next. So that means three whole days in Pondicherry. It’s not that Pondicherry is not a nice place to be… it’s just that one would prefer to pick one’s time for a holiday and right now is not a really good time for us. Not with a new job coming up, the kids to be settled into day care, and an Archaeology assignment that I seem to be making a total hash of.

On the other hand, if we have to spend three whole working days in Pondicherry, it’s just as well to get it done before I join my new job. So that means, early tomorrow morning, off we go.

Yet again.

Still not for the last time.

Sigh.

Adoption Update: Birth Certificates

Yes, we really did get them. At last. Yesterday evening.Twenty copies each. Well, when you have to work so hard for them, you don’t really want to stop with just one or two.

They’ve got their names and our names correctly spelt – which is no mean feat, when you think of all the letters in each name – but they had to get something wrong so they’ve got our address wrong and they’ve turned Koramangala in Karamangalala – which actually sounds quite dramatic, but, unfortunately or otherwise, is still wrong. And they’ve managed to make this mistake in only one girl’s BC, the other one is 100% ok! Of course we’ll have to get it changed… another round of endless paperwork and waiting.

But, well – worth celebrating, nevertheless. So we went out for dinner last night, of course. With the kids – it’s their celebration too!

Adoption Update: Almost Parents, Legally

We’re almost there, we’re almost parents, legally. Apparently the birth certificates are in the post, on their way to us. Finally!

Why should it be so important to get that little piece of paper naming us the parents of the twins? Well, the practical reasons are self-evident: schools want them for granting your child admission, passport offices want them for making your kids’ passports. And these are important reasons, of course. How are your kids going to get an education if they can’t travel abroad? Or get into school, for that matter?

But there’s more to it than that, especially when you’re adopting, or at least, there is for me.

When we first heard of the twins, I was torn between hope, excitement, and fear. I was scared that something would happen to prevent us from becoming their parents. Perhaps they would be shown to other prospective parents before we got there? Or their biological parents would surface and want them back. Or there would be some legal issue, or a medical one. Anything could happen.

Driving back from Pondicherry and for some weeks or months after that, I was painfully aware of how little there was to tie the kids to us. In terms of documents, we had only the foster care agreement, a flimsy scrap of paper that didn’t seem to me to carry much weight; and in emotional terms, we were still sort of a new set of circumstances to the kids, we weren’t quite parents, we weren’t quite home.

As the family bonds slowly formed and the kids became more certain of their place in our lives, my fears slowly receded. If they behaved with us as if we were their parents, if they had been with us for a significant length of time (though what exactly is significant in a child’s life? Six weeks? Six months? A year?), if they were comfortable and happy with us and turned to us for solace; and if we knew them better than any other person on the planet did, surely no person or institution could legally take them away from us?

It’ll soon be a year and a half since the kids came home. I don’t feel that fear much any more. I feel that they are very obviously and evidently our kids, despite the complete lack of any resemblance. It might not be apparent to others, who, apparently, still have reason to question who these kids belong to, but to me it is completely obvious that these kids are our kids.

Still, it is very important, emotionally, to get those bits of paper that will make the kids legally ours and will allow them an education to boot.

So, we’re both waiting eagerly to actually see the birth certificates, to check that all our names are correct and correctly spelled, and to know that we have the usual legal document establishing us as parent and child.

So, when we get these two marvelous bits of paper, what are we going to do to celebrate? Are we going to go out for dinner, or buy something nice for the kids? Of course not! This is the incredibly immaterial me – we’re going to give them an education. In Europe, hopefully.

Adoption Update: Finally, GAWA

At last we have it: a piece of paper stating that we are legal guardians of two little girls, known hereafter as Mrinalinee Mukherjee and Nayantara Mukherjee. These are our wards, until they turn 18.

Wards. That means, when we fill up bank papers and the like, we sign as Guardians, not as Parents. More importantly – much more importantly – it means that the girls are not automatically our legal heirs, the way biological children would be. If we both were to die, they would legally be literally penniless. (Oh my god. We must make our Wills.)

So anyway, at least they are our Wards.

Of course, it doesn’t sound so good when you put it that way. I still can’t – legally – say that they are our daughters. For that, we must first complete HAMA – the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act. And that’s where we hit a dead end.

It seems that the Principal Judge in Pondicherry does not admit outstation cases of adoption on the grounds that these should be filed in the home state, in our case, Karnataka. All other courts in the country flatly refuse to admit such cases because there is a CARA guideline stating that adoption cases must be filed in the state of the adoption agency – in our case, unfortunately, Pondicherry. (CARA is the central agency that regulates ALL legal adoptions within India.) While other courts abide by the CARA guideline, it seems it is just not good enough for the Judge in Pondicherry.

So, for the moment we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Adoption Update: No Update (Yet)

In case you’re thinking no news is good news, let me tell you: sometimes no news is just no news.

It’s been two-and-a-half months since the Family Court in Pondicherry passed the order appointing us legal guardians of the twins (under GAWA), but there’s been no progress since then. We haven’t even seen the order, far less received a copy of it.

Why? Because, apparently, the judges have been boycotting the court. For two months!? Don’t even ask.

So now, at last, the order is “ready” and we can go and get it registered. We also have to get the kids x-rayed, to assess their age – a procedure called a bone-age X-ray. The actual hospital record of their birth exists and is with the agency – I’ve seen it – so they do know the exact date and time of birth, but apparently that is not good enough.

The actual birth certificate is still a distant dream.

But we’re off to Pondicherry tomorrow, to take the next small step towards making the twins legally ours.

Adoption Update: Order Passed!

It’s official: We are now the legal guardians of the twins. Woohoo?

Well, don’t bring out the champagne bottles just yet – we’re not even half done.

See, if we were not Hindus (we’re not, really, but by dint of birth and for the sake of convenience(huh?) we’ll let that pass for now), once we were awarded guardianship of the twins, we’d be done. Almost done – apart from processing the paperwork required for getting their birth certificates.

But, since we’re Hindus, and specifically because we’ve adopted from Pondicherry (generally inadvisable, if you ask me), we now have to go through the legal process applicable to Hindus to complete the adoption.

Plus, we have to get the birth certificates.

Only, we can start the two processes in parallel.

Once we get a copy of the Judge’s order.

Which will take only a month.

Only?

Why?

Don’t ask me! I’d like to know why myself.

And then, based on that order, we have to get an adoption deed, which has to be registered. Somewhere. By someone. Yes, we have to be present for that, both of us.

And after that, we get have to get a bone-age X-ray done on the girls. And that has to be done in Pondicherry as well, and certified by the Chief Medical Officer.

Why? I don’t know – the adoption agency actually has the hospital records stating when and where and how they were born and what their birth weight was and that they were full term and all that, so I really don’t know why we need to subject them to an X-ray to tell us what we already know about how old they are.

And then we need to be interviewed by the DC – District Collector? Or Deputy Collector? Or District Magistrate? Somebody like that. And he wants to not only interview us, but meet the girls as well. In Pondicherry, of course, in Pondicherry.

Why? Well, why not? After all, the Judge hardly took any notice of us, so I suppose somebody should, just in case we are child traffickers or worse.

Oh, yes, the Judge. Well, Amit went and stood in the witness box and held his hand out and said “I swear to tell the truth,” and the Judge snickered. Yes, he really did, he snickered. Perhaps because Amit is so tall. Or maybe he caught sight of my haircut. Once he was done snickering, he spent a couple of minutes reading through the affidavit, while the court clerk shuffled through the accompanying documents. The lawyers were talking in whispers amongst themselves, like back benchers in college. The girls were wriggling, squirming, squealing, and flirting with the audience. I never heard it said, but apparently at the end of 90 seconds or so, he passed the order and went on to the next case. I didn’t hear or see any gavel being banged or anybody saying “Case dismissed,” – nothing like the movies at all. But anyway, Amit got to stand in the witness box, so I suppose that justifies the long, long drive to Pondicherry and back.

So we are now their official guardians, but only till the girls turn 18. Every year, we must send to the Family Court, reports of their health and wellbeing, along with school progress reports. Plus, we can’t leave the country with the girls; well, we can take short trips, provided we inform our lawyer and the adoption home first, but we can’t emigrate. And of course, the girls are still not our legal heirs, so if we had met with an accident and died on the way back from Pondicherry (or at any time now), they would  have been left penniless. This, of course, we have to remedy as soon as possible, because you never know, do you?

And meanwhile, the second part of the adoption case, under the Hindu Adoption and Maintenance Act, which will make them our legal heirs, could take a year or more in the Pondicherry Civil Court. So that champagne celebration had better wait a while yet, don’t you think.

Adoption Update: “No objection, Milord” (or words to that effect)

I think the toughest part of the hearing on Friday, was leaving home on Thursday afternoon.

First, I spent the morning rushing around packing food, clothes, and getting the girls and self ready for the trip.  Amit coolly stuffed one change of clothes and a toothbrush into his laptop case and left for office, expecting to be picked up on the way out.

I usually don’t pack food for a trip – after all, eating out is half the fun of traveling, right? But then, last time we went to Pondicherry, the kids didn’t get their usual quota of fruit and veg and wound up severely constipated. Severe constipation in a child is, I have discovered, waaaaaaaay worse than diarrhoea. Although I would not have believed that anything could be worse than diarrhoea from the hapless mother’s perspective, it only took one brush with constipation to convince me otherwise. Ugggggggggh!

So anyway, there was packed lunch for me and Amit, packed sandwiches for our early evening nibbles, and packed milk and dinner for the kids, in addition to small quantities of apple, mango, and banana for snacking on. The car was invited for 1 p.m. (taxi, of course; I wasn’t going to let Amit drive the whole way while I struggled to manage the twins in the back seat) and  by the time I managed to make it out the front door with the kids awake and walking, and a huge bag of food and diapers hanging from my hand, and a heavy, lumpy backpack full of clothes and toys hanging on my shoulders, it was 1.30. Not bad.

We picked up Amit, made a detour towards an ATM machine, and were heading out of town by 2.30. After various checkposts, toll taxes, and other minor delays, we reached Pondicherry at 10 p.m. None of us had had any dinner. We had given the kids their afternoon milk around 5 p.m. and Tara had started vomiting at 6 and kept it up for a solid hour before (thankfully) falling asleep. Mrini, who was largely ignored in the tension of cleaning up after Tara, keeping an eye out for the next load of puke, and attempting not to get it on our clothes, shoes, or the food bag, fell asleep out of sheer boredom. Naturally, we were not at all enthusiastic at the prospect of waking up either girl for dinner, so once we had reached, and the girls had woken up in the excitement of alighting at the hotel, we ordered a late, late, late dinner from room service.

One rule that we try not to compromise on is to keep the girls awake and active for at least an hour after dinner, before putting them to bed. Consequently, it was close to midnight before any of us got to sleep.

Despite which, we were all bathed, breakfasted, and present at the courthouse a few minutes before 10 the next morning. The kids seemed none the worse for the long drive the day before and were full of mischief. The good news was that the court clerk told us ours would be the first case. The bad news was that there was no sign of our lawyer, even at 10.15 when the Judge was in court and some preliminary business was being completed. Amit had already called her and told her that we were there and that ours was the first case, but that did not seem to unduly perturb her. She finally came up the steps in a leisurely manner, caught sight of us anxiously scanning the steps, carefully avoided making eye contact or in any way acknowledging our presence, and went into the courtroom in a stony silence. About 5-10 minutes later, our case was called, and all four of us found our way to the front of the courtroom. A brief exchange took place between the lawyer and the Judge (in Tamil), and we were told to come for the next hearing two weeks later.

And that was that. Our 30 seconds in the spotlight were over before we had quite realized they had begun.

What was supposed to have happened was that the Department for Social Welfare was supposed to have said that they had no objection to us adopting the twins. What in fact happened is anyone’s guess. Amit says he signed something, but he has no clue what it was. The Judge hardly glanced at us or at our papers. Still, apparently something had happened, and we were to appear for a similar “something” two weeks later.

Oh well – at least it was quick and easy. Of course, there’s the minor matter of subjecting two adults and two toddlers to two car trips of seven hours’ duration each, all for the sake of that 30-second appearance… but if it all gets done and with the minimum number of hearings possible, I’m not complaining.