This past September my husband Raj and I traveled to India to pick up our son, Mohan, from an orphanage in South India--near the city of Cochin in the state of Kerala. Mohan means charming and from the pictures we had seen he certainly was--with bow-like lips and big almond-shaped brown eyes with eyelashes half an inch long. Our journey to get our son had started more than a year earlier with our decision to adopt a child, followed by a lot of research to choose an agency and then a mound of paperwork.
We were excited to bring him home but it would be a long journey. For Raj it would be a new and different look at his homeland; he is from Delhi and had never been south of Bombay. I love to travel and like to see as much as I can--as close up as possible--but this would be a different kind of trip for me. With the adoption as our objective, there was no time for sightseeing and a lot of the time was spent in airports and cars, but India and the experience of picking up our son left me with powerful and enduring impressions.
TRAVELING TO KERALA
It's no small task to get to the small village where Mohan was staying in a privately run orphanage and we spent a lot of time traveling--especially on planes. We flew through Paris to Bombay, arriving just around midnight. All flights to Cochin for the next day were full; our only option was to fly from Bombay to Madras and then to Cochin with several hours layover.
After spending hours in the Bombay and Madras airports, we finally arrived in Cochin's pristine and shiny airport in the early afternoon. The Cochin airport did not have all the hustle and bustle of the larger city airports like Bombay and Delhi. People moved more slowly and smiled more easily. The men, with the simple cotton lungis typical of the south draped around their waists looked as graceful as the women in their saris did. The monsoon had already passed through Kerala and although it was not cool, the expected heat was tolerable.
We spent the next two hours riding on hilly, narrow roads through villages and rubber plantations. We passed by groups of school children on their way home from school, women going about their daily errands dressed in simple cotton house dresses. Men stood in twos and threes talking and periodically retying their lungis.
Despite the appearance of tranquility by the roads, our driver used his horn liberally, following the advice of "horn please" painted carefully on the back of all the trucks. It took me a while to decipher this behavior; he honked his horn just before he swerved around a truck or car to pass so that any oncoming traffic would be aware that he was coming. This habit was only scary when the oncoming vehicle was a bus. Painted with bright colors and bold designs, I hated to think what a collision would look like.
After passing through one more village and past an Ayurvedic resort, however, we safely reached the end of our journey--the orphanage and the director's home. We stopped off at the house first where the director and her gregarious dachshunds greeted us. We would go to see Mohan a little later--it was naptime in the nursery.
MEETING MOHAN
Mohan was 13 months old and reaching proper development milestones--including having stranger anxiety. He was attached to his caregivers and did not want anything to do with strangers like us.
Fortunately one of the caregivers had a great idea. She took him over to the window of the playroom and held him so he could just stand on the windowsill with support from the back. While he was busy looking at the coconut and rubber trees she motioned to me to come behind her and take her place. When he turned around he saw that I had been holding him and from then on let me carry him and play with him. This was the beginning of a healthy attachment to me.
With Raj it was much more difficult, however. Mohan was accustomed to female caregivers and distrustful of males in general. He would look in Raj's direction and then cast his eyes downward. If direct eye contact occurred, he would start to cry. This meant that I would be the primary caregiver on the way to Delhi to get Mohan's visa and then on the way home. By the time we were in Delhi Mohan would let Raj hold him, but it wasn't until we got home that he felt comfortable being alone with him. Now, however, he doesn't want to let his dad out of his sight.
The day we left the orphanage for Cochin there was a brief handing over ceremony in the chapel. The caregivers had a chance to say goodbye to Mohan before he joined our family. After prayers, hymns, and a blessing in the local language, Malayalam, Mohan was passed around for final kisses and hugs from the caregivers and then put into my arms. We said a few good-byes and thank-yous. Unfortunately communication was a little difficult as the native language is not anything like the Hindi that Raj speaks.
SIGHTSEEING IN COCHIN
We traveled to Cochin back over the same narrow and winding roads. It was not a pleasant ride. Mohan was overtired and frightened and I succumbed to my stomach's adverse reaction to the bumpy ride. We were happy to finally reach our hotel room, which overlooked the Arabian Sea.
Throughout the day you could hear the Muslim call to prayer, which was the only timekeeper needed in this quiet coastal city. I had read a little bit about Kerala's diverse religious and cultural population and Cochin's churches, mosques, and synagogue. Additionally, as the center of the spice trade, Cochin has remnants of both Portuguese and Chinese culture along with the native culture.
More generally I had read that Kerala has a lush and green topography with bird sanctuaries and quiet backwaters. I knew that a lazy boat ride down one of Kerala's peaceful back rivers was out of the question, but I thought we might be able to make it to the center of Cochin to see the synagogue and walk through the old spice market. Unfortunately we only had one full day to relax before moving on to Delhi to get Mohan's visa. We went across the road to a government-run shop and bought a few souvenirs and walked along the boardwalk with our new son. Somehow, on this trip, it was enough.
In his new environment Mohan was not feeling very inquisitive--everything was new and it seemed he wanted to clutch something familiar. He started to play a game of peek-a-boo with me--covering his eyes and then uncovering them saying "cha" (peek-a-boo) as I had seen him do in the playroom with his caregivers.
I think he wanted to make a connection with me but I also imagine he was hoping that when he opened his eyes things would return to normal. He did find a friend, however, when he looked in the mirror on the bathroom door. He also slowly made other discoveries. He never did find out, however, why those dancing women on the TV wouldn't come out of that box.
FREEDOM AT THE DELHI AIRPORT
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| Jenny and Mohan in the Delhi airport |
Delhi is a little bit of a blur for me. It was a short and pragmatic visit and my impression of Delhi was not how exotic it was, but how familiar. Perhaps it was the absence of closed spaces and air conditioning that I have become accustomed to in the U.S. All the smells had a chance to escape and mingle--wood, wicker, wool... Just as when I as a child all my senses were open again.
Unfortunately I had gastrointestinal distress, to put it mildly, and needed one whole day of complete rest. This cut out any chance of sightseeing in Delhi, as we still needed to get Mohan's visa processed. After we took care of the paperwork at the U.S. embassy, we did a little shopping and then packed up.
We left for the Delhi airport on a Friday evening. We made it through all the security and then waited at the gate. Once we got to an open space with fewer people, Mohan forgot his fears and there was no holding him back. After going from the enclosed playroom and nursery at the orphanage to the small hotel rooms, he never imagined that the world could be as big as an airport. He raced from one end of the large waiting area to the other, with endless energy. After this workout, fortunately, he slept all the way from Delhi to Paris.
The Paris airport afforded more running room and his syllable of choice at that time just happened to be "oui." After one more fairly uneventful flight we were back in the U.S.: a new country with a new climate, new language and, as Mohan would discover, much, much more.
MOHAN ARRIVES IN HIS NEW WORLD
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| Mohan and Raj |
We were home by the afternoon and, after a warm greeting by our two dogs, went to bed. As Mohan is a good sleeper he let us all sleep until the next morning. He woke up ready to conquer his new world. His first discovery was grass. After breakfast we took the stroller down to the park. When I took him out and put him on the grass he wouldn't move--he didn't like the moist and scratchy feeling. He didn't even want to walk on the soft ground. He just wanted to stand quietly and look at all the new things around him; every blade of grass and puff of wind was a new experience.
Suddenly I was able to see and hear things I had taken for granted as I looked through Mohan's eyes. I watched him listen to the wind and observe it move the branches of the trees. The soundscape was full of birds chirping and plane engines roaring overhead. Mohan is still interested in things that move through the air, especially planes. He loves to watch the planes fly overhead every evening. I look forward to explaining to him how we flew to India to pick him up, what we saw and experienced there and at home after we all flew back together in jumbo jet to start a new life together.
For more information on Kerala, visit:
http://www.keralatourism.orgFor information on international and Indian adoption, visit:
http://www.rainbowkids.com