Lost in Delhi, adopted in US, girl hunts for her family

New Delhi, June 06: Like Latika in Slumdog Millionaire, 17-year-old Janaki Hedstrom escaped a life of poverty through circumstances she had no control over. HOPE FLOATS: 17-yr-old Janaki’s sister used to work as a maid for a family in Delhi.

When she saw the film, this Std X student in a Florida school cried for her mother back in India but hid her emotions from her American mother. Now, she desperately wants to see her original family again.

Some 10 years, Janaki got separated from her family in Delhi after she couldn’t find her way back home and was adopted by a family in the US. But the vivid memories she has of her family from West Bengal or Bangladesh (she does not remember where) ensured that she never quite settled down to the life of an average American teenager. With the help of an aunt, Janaki has now given an advertisement in a Bengali temple booklet asking for the whereabouts of her sister Photima, who she says used to work as maid for a family in Delhi.

But her adoptive parents have been kept in the dark about the quest because, as her aunt, Martha Kalsey, puts it: “Mothers will be mothers and are often reluctant to let the kids go.”

Janaki still understands her mother tongue, Bangla, though she does not speak it anymore. When TOI contacted her at her Florida home, wary of raising the hackles of her adoptive parents she volunteered to speak in Hindi. She spoke haltingly but the longing was evident. Asked what she liked about India, she said, “Sab kuch (everything)”. And what did she not like about America, where, by her own admission, she is happy? The answer again is “sab kuch”.

Martha says Janaki was adopted from a Delhi orphanage by Martha’s sister about seven-eight years ago. She was then 10-11 years old and had vivid memories of her family including how she had gone out for an ice-cream with her elder brother who, when he spotted some boys playing a cricket match, asked her to go home on her own. She lost the way, only to end up in the orphanage where she spent two years before the adoption.

Janaki’s first adoption did not work out. According to Martha, “I have a feeling one of the reasons was that she was too old when she came here and she came from a very close-knit family which made it very difficult for her to adjust.”

Four-and-a-half years later, Martha’s sister arranged for her re-adoption with a family in Florida. “But she keeps talking about her Indian family all the time which prompted me to take this recourse (placing an ad). She has vivid memories but we are not willing to talk about all that or the names of her family members because we will need that to verify any claims. Janaki says if she succeeds in locating her family, she would want all of them to come to the US.”

Growing up in a family of 20 kids, Janaki does not often have time to pursue her own interests, but many of these remain typically Indian. She is fond of dancing — while with her first adoptive family, she had taken up Kathak — is fond of Hrithik Roshan in particular and Bollywood movies in general and is fond of Indian food — hotter the better.

Janaki has told her family that her sister Photima used to work in a house with big gates and a guard and looked after a baby there. For Martha, that is her only lead in reuniting her favourite niece — “she is an adorable girl and I wished her to live with me,” she says — with the family she was born to and cannot forget.

—Agencies–