My nerve-shredding odyssey to adopt my little girl
Rejection. Blackmail. Chilling threats. As Nicole Kidman’s Bafta nominated movie highlights the murky world of India’s orphanages, one British mother recalls . . .
Last week I found myself sobbing. I’d just watched Lion, the Bafta-nominated film starring Nicole Kidman, based on the true story about a mother who adopts a child from an Indian orphanage. the film, in parts, is uncannily similar to my experience. twelve years ago I adopted my daughter when she was 15 months old from an Indian orphanage in what turned out to be one of the most traumatic yet life-affirming experiences I’ve ever had.
In the past, I’ve been guilty of telling Maya, now a gorgeous, happy, ambitious 14-year-old schoolgirl, a rose-tinted version of her adoption, because I feel childhood should be rose-tinted.
she knows I had a passionate desire to be a mother and that I flew to India, the country I adored, to find her. In the early version we walked off hand in hand into the sunset together and lived happily ever after.
But last week Maya asked me to tell her the true story — a tale of deceit and blackmail, of child trafficking and human cruelty, but also of incredible kindness and love shown by many of the people I met in India.
I’d always known I wouldn’t be able to have a child of my own. at 15 I was diagnosed with endometriosis and told, aged 20, I needed a hysterectomy. after enduring five more years of hospital admissions and debilitating pain, at 25 I decided that I needed my life back.
Having a hysterectomy so young was devastating. For a long time I blocked the whole thing, throwing myself into the work I loved, building my practice as a nutritionist.
By 35, however, I knew I was ready to start looking into adoption as a single woman. I’d had long-term relationships, but the right man never came along to share parenthood with.
It didn’t take me long to find out that my chance of adopting a baby in the UK were virtually nil. When I realised this, my immediate thought was I’ll adopt a little girl from India.
None of my family has any ties to this part of the world, but I’d travelled there when I was 30 and fallen in love with the landscape, the people, the colour and the culture.
Looking back, I was breathtakingly naive. In Britain, there were no agencies that facilitate adoptions from India. and in India, they loathed anything that smacked of the Raj days, making British parents a deeply unpopular adoption choice.
What’s more, although I was adopting a child abroad, I still had to go through the hoops everyone goes through in this country to be approved as an adoptive parent. and that wasn’t easy either.
It’s right that we have to be vetted, but as part of the process one British social worker expressed a worry my home was too tidy and minimalist and that I might come across as controlling, if I didn’t have a chaotic, soft-furnished home.
SHE also contacted a nominated referee friend to ask if she suspected me of having an affair with her husband, just because I’d come to know him first through work. I couldn’t believe she felt it was her place to walk into someone’s home and make such accusations, based on nothing more than her curiosity over our friendship.
But you jump through these hoops, and on November 12, 2003, I was finally approved. Over the next couple of weeks I Fedexed 50 letters to orphanages in India, with copies of all my certificates and papers. I got one reply: a curt response telling me they weren’t interested.
so I thought: ‘I’ve just got to go.’ I was lucky. a friend of a friend introduced me to a wonderful barrister called armina Halim and she put me in touch with orphanages.
In early 2004 I flew out to India and spent weeks visiting orphanages in Calcutta. It turned out to be a frustratingly fruitless search. Calcutta is dominated by Catholic orphanages — and Catholicism doesn’t know what to do with a single woman who wants to be a parent, let alone a British single woman.
I’d travel for hours to an orphanage and they’d just shut the door. Or they’d invite me in for tea for the whole afternoon and still say no.
If anyone has a cushy vision of a beautiful orphanage full of people who work there because they adore children, you haven’t seen the places I’ve seen. the sinister Calcutta orphanage in the film Lion, where the children themselves know that bad things happen and youngsters go missing in the night, rings very true.
But I wouldn’t give up. For weeks I went backwards and forwards to India, trying to fit my career into the brief weeks I was at home.
I’d assumed when I walked into an orphanage, I’d want to scoop up every child and take them all home.
But in the event it was harrowing — there’d be 200 children clawing at you. sometimes the screams were unbearable, but more distressingly the silence of children who had given up crying was overwhelming.
One of the most depressing visits was to a rather nice orphanage outside Delhi. they had called me to say they thought I’d make a fantastic mum to one of their little girls with profound special needs.
But when I held the child, she was so physically and emotionally traumatised and disabled, I realised I didn’t have what it took and I shamefully walked away.
after months of knocking on doors I contracted pneumonia due to the stress on my body. I was in Pune, near Mumbai, when I phoned my friend armina in desperation: ‘I’m wanting to be a mum to a little girl, and they’re not allowing me,’ I cried.
she calmed me down and sent some friends to take me for lunch. When her friends arrived they told me about an orphanage in Pune.
I insisted I couldn’t face going through the process again, but they took me there anyway. as soon as we walked through the door I said: ‘Look I’m British, single, have my papers, are you interested? I’m not going to have a cup of tea for another five hours.’
to my surprise, they said they’d consider me. so I went back and forwards for weeks helping out at the orphanage, feeding and holding the children they would allow me to see.
there were two sides to this orphanage; the side they wanted foreigners to have access to, which although far from luxurious was more hospitable than the dreadful, filthy, cot-filled rooms with tiny babies silent in them, which they preferred to be kept from our eyes.
One morning the owner said two new babies had been brought in, and would I like to choose one. I asked the orphanage staff to video the meeting and still cry when I watch the footage. the first tiny baby was premature. I put her in my lap and thought: ‘What am I meant to feel?’ then they brought Maya in. some people think it’s impossible to love an adopted child in the same way you’d love your own biological child, but I know I couldn’t love my daughter Maya any more than I do. We were meant to be together.
I looked at her in that crowded orphanage, this tiny five-month-old girl with eyes like big chocolate buttons, and she smiled at me. and that was it. I was her mum.
Her birth mother had died and her father, who had an older son and daughter, could not cope with a newborn. I guessed Maya’s mother had died within weeks of her birth because she’d barely been fed.
she was horribly malnourished and had developed rickets — you could literally put a football between her legs. Her head was so heavy and
her body so tiny that she couldn’t support herself.
The next ten months were excruciating. The formalities meant Maya had to remain in India while I shuttled between Pune and London, knowing her health was getting worse. I tried to get Maya to have extra milk and gave money to the carer, but they didn’t see the problem.
My one stroke of luck was a new friend I’d met at a hotel when travelling in the south of India — navin Poddar or ‘Baba’ (a form of uncle in Hindi) as Maya now calls him.
He was a happily married businessman in his 50s with grown-up children, and when I told him my story, he offered his help. I must admit I was rude to him at first. I told him: ‘you can’t have sex with me and you can’t have any money — as far as I can see that’s all that’s ever wanted.’
We laugh about it now. He just said: ‘I don’t want either. I’m a Hindu and I want to help you.’
navin was as good as his word. He sent his car to pick me up from the airport and visited Maya every week, cuddled her and told her her mum loved her. Sometimes he’d travel for hours by bus through the monsoon. I will always be incredibly grateful to navin — without him it’s unlikely I would have got Maya out of India. He saved her life.
This is the piece of the story I’ve never told before. The ophanage owner, a middle-aged man, draped in silks, Savile Row suits and gold around his fingers, strung out the paperwork, forcing donations out of me. He insisted on seeing the deeds of my house and the tax accounts for my top-earning three years.
When I questioned the payments (formally called voluntary donations), he said unless I paid up, Maya would disappear — and I knew this wasn’t an idle threat.
As it turned out, it was the reality for many other parents and babies who had fallen into his path.
With navin’s help I contacted the police, who formally warned he would have to let Maya go or risk prosecution. There was a danger Maya would go missing if I angered him, but I knew he would never give her up unless I stood up to him.
A couple of years later I read he’d been jailed after U.S. broadcaster Cnn revealed the orphanage was a front for child trafficking. The owner had been illegally selling Indian babies to foreigners.
As the film Lion makes clear, more than 80,000 children go missing in India each year, and where you have people who desperately want a child, and someone who knows how to get hold of children, there will always be a dark side.
By the time I got the green light to pick up Maya, my parents were getting very worried, so my mother flew out with me. When they handed her over at the orphanage, I told Maya: ‘It’s you and me together in this life,’ but until I got her onto the plane I was incredibly anxious that she could at any point be taken away from me.
I held it together until I walked towards the airport gate and said goodbye to navin, and the enormity of what I had done — was doing — started a flood of tears.
In London, life seemed more straightforward even though there
was an enormous amount to be done. Maya was severely malnourished, weighing just 7½lb. I went into fulltime mothering mode, carrying her in a papoose for months.
Luckily, as a nutritionist, nourishing vulnerable people is my passion. So she went from a tiny, vulnerable baby to a lovely, scrumptious bundle, as her body got the food it needed for the first time.
Now she’s almost as tall as me. It’s phenomenal to see how she has thrived. She’s at a school near our village in Rutland — her dream is to become an Olympic showjumper.
In India, it’s illegal for adopted children to trace birth parents. But I have taken Maya on several trips to India. The first was when she was six. She’s always known she was adopted and I wanted her to see the beauty of the country where she was born.
Navin met us at the airport. I thought she wouldn’t recognise him, but she ran straight up to him and jumped into his arms. Navin adores Maya and sends her parcels with saris and lovely things.
I’ve never been back to Pune. The fight was so raw, but I will go back with Maya when she’s older, if she would like to. For Maya there’s no hidden element to her life and I hope she can talk to me about anything.
She doesn’t speak any Indian language — though I would love it if she learned Hindi. A few years ago she told me she’d like to set up a wildlife sanctuary in India. I thought: ‘How gorgeous would that be, if she goes back full circle?’
People have asked if I’d adopt again — I wouldn’t. I couldn’t put Maya through the invasiveness of social services. Also I rolled a double six with her. Why would I want to change the beautiful life we have together? As told to liz Hoggard. lion is released on friday.