{"id":576,"date":"2016-03-13T18:43:40","date_gmt":"2016-03-13T18:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=576"},"modified":"2016-03-13T18:43:40","modified_gmt":"2016-03-13T18:43:40","slug":"adoption-in-india-how-i-met-my-mothers-adopted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=576","title":{"rendered":"How I Met My Mothers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"container page-content\"><p><span class=\"dropcap\">I<\/span><\/p><\/div><p>t happened just like it does in the movies.\n\nClose on the heels of my father dying of cancer when I was 12, I found some papers. My mother, who didn\u2019t have much of an education and had always just taken care of my father, brother, and me, suddenly had her centre taken away from her with his death. All these men, my father\u2019s clients (he was a lawyer), were showing up at our house, demanding that their papers be returned. At the same time, a variety of people came to her, claiming that her husband had taken a collective loan of \u20b920 lakh from them, which she knew nothing about.\n\nOf course, we didn\u2019t have the money. But as a 12-year-old boy I wanted to help her find these papers, and in the middle of all of them, I found a file. In that file were my adoption papers. Years later, I had two birth certificates. On each, I had different names. On each, I had different mothers.\n\nThe drama wasn\u2019t over. In fact, it had just started. Soon after I found my adoption papers, we saw an obituary written for my father by a woman who claimed to be his wife. I think at this time if you\u2019d told me that God was an orangutan I would have believed it.\n\nI never thought when I saw that obituary, that there was some kind of connection between these adoption papers that I had found, and this new woman who had entered our lives. Of course, my mother found out immediately that the \u20b920 lakh that my father owed in debt was because he had been trying desperately to secure this other wife\u2019s future; he bought her a house, not very far from where we lived. It became my mother\u2019s only agenda in life to stop her from getting the house. She won, many many years later, but for some reason, she never used the money to pay off the debts.\n\nWhen I first discovered the papers, I didn\u2019t ask my mother about them immediately. I felt like I\u2019d stumbled onto something I wasn\u2019t supposed to know about or find, and I was confused. I asked her about it later that day, and she yelled at me for finding the papers. But the actual conversation with her happened only days later. It wasn\u2019t even a conversation where she sat me down and told me everything; it all just came out in the middle of a huge argument about it.\n\nI found out that I was the son of my father\u2019s other wife, who even had another son with him after I was born. I also heard another story \u2013 that as a baby, my father had taken me to my biological mother\u2019s house, put the adoption papers on a table and me on the floor, and had stood over me with his shoe, ready. He demanded that my biological mother sign the adoption papers. He said that if she didn\u2019t, nobody could have the baby. Just joyous.\n\n<blockquote class=\"quote--center\"><p>My biological mother first asked to meet me when my mother was at home after hospitalisation for a very stupid and brutal UTI.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nAnyway, after my father died, my mother never let me leave the house. I studied at Baldwin\u2019s School in Bengaluru, and she would always have somebody dropping me to the gates in the morning, somebody to send me lunch, and somebody to walk back home with me. Why? I later realised it was because my mother lived in a constant state of paranoia that I\u2019d be snatched away from her by my biological mother. I was 15 when she first let me walk home from school alone.\n\nIn the background of all these land mines exploding around my life, there was my self-destructive older brother who I shared an immensely fractured relationship with. With this fraught situation at home, I had taken to living in my Maruti 800.\n\nThat car saved my life. I spent all my time in it; I would only come home to bathe and sleep. I fell in love with this girl at the Alliance Fran\u00e7aise, and the break-up, combined with my own preoccupation with my situation at home, led me to cigarettes and pot and spending my time smoking in my car. Once, when I needed money to give the car a major re-haul, my mother gave it to me, and told me to leave \u201cdrugs, cigarettes, and nirodh\u201d. I didn\u2019t know what to say. I just left.\n\nMy biological mother first asked to meet me when my mother was at home after hospitalisation for a very stupid and brutal UTI. Three weeks later she had an episode of multiple strokes at home. She didn\u2019t make it. When Bio-Mom called, I thought, why the fuck not, this was just\u2026 peachy. I had been going to court to get a stay order on their decision to auction our house because we hadn\u2019t paid the loan, my mother was in hospital, I had just spent time fixing the absolutely filthy kitchen in our house, my brother was pissed off and trying to throw glass jam bottles at me. Why not make this party really rock?\n\nWhen we met, my biological mother told me the story of how my father had made her sign the adoption papers. She also told me that when she was pregnant with me, she would beat her stomach in the hope that I would die, because she knew I would be taken away from her. After this I plumbed new depths in depression. I smoked a lot of cigarettes and anything that would get me high.\n\nMy relationship with my mother never repaired itself. She died before I could resolve my issues with her, before I had a chance to get over the fact that I couldn\u2019t trust her again, before I could forgive her for never telling me the truth.\n\nOf course, I know it isn\u2019t easy to have such a conversation with your child, but I think adults should make that decision when they decide to adopt a child. It\u2019s insane that adults think they don\u2019t owe adopted children the truth. The difference it makes in the life of the child is enormous.\n\nMy girlfriend, who I\u2019ve been with for five years, is also adopted (of course!), but unlike me, she shares a very confident relationship with her family. She\u2019s been told the truth ever since she was young. For her, telling someone she\u2019s adopted is like telling them where she went to school.\n\nI got a WhatsApp message from my biological mother this year, saying \u201cHappy Birthday, from a well-wisher.\u201d My first thought was, are you fucking running for the local assembly? What the fuck is this well-wisher business? I know she means well. She means to reconnect. She means to tell me that even though one mother may have gone, another one remains. What a glorious mindfuck.\n\nMaybe someday, when this house is finally gone, I might find her.\n\nOr mostly not.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I believe adults owe their adopted children the truth. I found out about my biological mother after my father died, and that\u2019s when the real drama began.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[439],"tags":[1023,1024,1025,465,1026,62,64,1027,19,939],"class_list":["post-576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-modern-family","tag-adopt","tag-adopt-me","tag-adopted","tag-adoption","tag-adoption-in-india","tag-arre","tag-arre-originals","tag-hindu-adoption-and-maintenance-act","tag-india","tag-whatsapp"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How I Met My Mothers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I believe adults owe their adopted children the truth. 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I found out about my biological mother after my father died, and that\u2019s when the real drama began.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/?p=576\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Arr\u00e9\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-03-13T18:43:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.arre.co.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1479188282.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"800\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Author||ila ananya\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"How I Met My Mothers\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"I believe adults owe their adopted children the truth. 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