Adoption...

Yesterday, a neighbour couple adopted a 4-month-old baby girl from a reputed orphanage in Chennai. She was sleeping when we, me and my 5-year-old daughter Mihika, went to see her. Though I was happy seeing the child, I was a bit disturbed with questions related to the baby's birth....who's her mother, dad? How did she become an orphan? etc etc.. Whatever it be, i didn't want to spoil my mood, for this was the first time in my life i came so close to 'adoption'.
I had studied the subject in my Law days, but never got so close to the process.
A friend of mine once told me he wanted to adopt a boy since he has a daughter. He had a reason. It was in 2004. The tsunami had just hit the Indian shores, killing thousands of people. He wanted to adopt a child among those who had lost their parents in the disaster. The idea sounded nice to me and i encouraged him. A couple of months later, the friend told me that his wife was pregnant and he wanted to abort the idea of adopting a child.
A bachelor friend once told me, "I don't want to adopt a child. It's not mine, somebody's child. Why should i adopt?"... True, i do agree. But a child is a child. There is something beyond the 'mine' or 'yours'. If you have any doubt, you look at their eyes. You get the answer.
I appreciate my neighbour couple and wish them all the best.

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