M2 THE MAGAZINEIndia Abroad August 7, 2009

When Shelley Seale first metSantosh in 2005, he was nineyears old – and painfully shy.

He had arrived at the orphanage inOrissa when he was turning two. His moth-er had died; his father had remarried and –in the trite language officialdom uses todescribe what for a small child is a cata-clysmic event, the father ‘was staying inanother place leaving Santosh helpless andalone, because the second mother ofSantosh did not agree to keep the childwith her.’

Shelley found Santosh very reticent. “Ithought he was too shy,” the writer recalledin course of an extended interview. “But Iwas wrong. He was simply not used to theattention and had difficulty grasping theidea that someone had come from acrossthe world just to visit him. It is a powerfulthing to walk into a place like that and callout a child’s name, to say I am here for you,to these children for whom no one has evercome looking. It is a powerful, life-chang-ing thing to be sought out, to realize thatsomeone else knows they exist. To matter.”

Just how deep the wounds could run, justhow much the idea of ‘family’ could matter,dawned on Shelley the day she, along withthe orphanage officials, decided to host anice cream party for the kids.

Santosh was missing; Shelley finallyfound him sitting by himself, far removedfrom the bustle, teary eyed and listless. Ahouse mother took the boy aside to askwhat was wrong.

“When she returned she said simply, ‘Hemisses his mother’,” Shelley recalled. “I feltit in my heart. I knew that Santosh’s moth-er had died when he was so young he could-n’t possibly remember her, not really. Buthe was mourning the idea of a mother —that huge absence in his life that felt like agreat, gaping hole he couldnever fill even with all theaffection the surrogates inthe orphanage lavished onhim.”

Shelley Seale, a nativeof Austin, Texas, isthe oldest of three

girls – or of fifty-plus chil-dren of both sexes, de-pending on how youdefine ‘family’.

Her own definition goesbeyond blood and is inclu-sive, vast; it wraps theyoung of the world in itssympathetic embrace –and it stems from whenshe was very young.

Her mother SandraSeale became a foster par-

ent with the Edna Gladney Home in FortWorth, Texas, a home for unwed mothers.“More than fifty babies lived with us overthe years on their journeys to adoptive par-ents,” Shelley recalls of her childhood years,“and in 1984, my parents adopted myyoungest sister just as I was graduatingfrom high school.”

With that empathetic background, it wasinevitable that Shelley would find her rai-son d’etre in the world of the very young —

mentoring at-risk teen girls, volunteeringwith Child Protective Services and as acourt appointed advocate, fighting forthose children who had been removed fromparents due to abuse or neglect.

Her personal epiphany occurred the day,in 2004, when in a local lifestyle magazineTribeza she read the story of CarolineBoudreaux who, on a visit to India threeyears earlier, chanced on an orphanage inOrissa full of children living in incompre-

hensible conditions. Boudreauxreturned home and started theMiracle Foundation, a non-profitto raise money and recruit spon-sors to help support the home.

“I began volunteering for theorganization, and sponsored achild back in India,” Shelley recalls.“Caroline invited me to accompanyher on a volunteer trip to Orissa,and I made my first visit in March2005.”

Four years down the line, Shelleystill struggles to encapsulate thesensory deluge of that first trip to aland she, till that point, knew verylittle about.

“India was everything I hadimagined it would be – only moreso: more colors and smells, morenoises and people, more every-thing. It was an assault on all the

senses at once, and I was over-whelmed. But it also felt like anincredible gift, the most alive placeI’d ever been in.

“It wrapped itself around me andrefused to let go.”

If India invaded her mind, it wasthe orphanage that left thedeepest impression on her

heart. She expected a place of infi-nite sadness; she suspected she hadunwittingly let herself in for anemotionally wrenching experience.

“Yes, there were stories behindeach of the children – many of thempainful and tragic: stories of death,abandonment, abuse, poverty,” saysShelley. “Yet the man who ran thehome and his family had made thekids their own in a community ofsharing and acceptance. They werepoor in wealth but not in spirit;limited in resources but not in joyand laughter. They shared every-

thing with me and gave me an uncondi-tional love, for nothing more than simplyshowing up. The first day I was there, Iknew I would be back.”

Shelley went back. In March 2006 as partof a volunteer group with teenage daughterChandler in tow; a solo visit in 2007 whereshe spent a week at the Miracle Foundationand then travelled across the countryimmersing herself in the plight of its young.And then she went again, in March 2009.“I miss it already, and can’t wait to goagain!” she said from her Austin home.

Somewhere along the way, as the childrenof India inveigled themselves into her mindand heart, and as she found herself alteredin ways she hadn’t imagined possible, abook began to incubate.

“The very existence of these children for-ever altered both the person I was and myview of the world,” Shelley said. “As I borewitness to the harm that lay in each of thembecause of their pasts, as I discovered thestories behind the faces and the names,there was simply no way to go on with mylife afterwards as if they did not exist. Iembarked on a three-year journey,researching the issues, travelling through-out India and talking to many professionalsand those working in the trenches touphold these children’s rights and improvetheir futures.”

“They were invisible children, without areal voice of their own. And that gave methe purpose I was looking for – to write abook that would give these millions of chil-dren a voice that could be heard by othersin the world who, I was convinced, wouldbe as moved by their plights as I was.”

That idea would in time become TheWeight of Silence: The Children of India,Shelley Seale’s book under the Dog’s EyeView Media imprint released earlier thismonth. But before the 300 pages filled withthe words that would take the stories ofthose children to caring humans world-wide, Shelley embarked on a countrywideodyssey to gather material.

“This was probably the most difficult part

A chance article,a visit to India – of such randomacts is life transformed.Prem Panicker reports onsuch change in the lives of the children of India andof a writer who encountered them

Teardrops on thecheek of Time

JOURNEY

!M3Caroline Boudreaux, who started the Miracle Foundation, with its orphans

Shelley Seale with the childrenof the Miracle Foundation inOrissa in March 2009

Santosh, right, arrived at the orphanage at the age of two

of writing the book,” Shelley recalled.“Although much of the book and children’sstories take place at the MiracleFoundation homes in Orissa, the book isspread all over India and profiles manychildren and incredible adults working ontheir behalf all over the country. And thereobviously is also a lot of facts and figuresabout the issues affecting these childrenthat needs to be imparted.”

Her travels took her beyond Orissa, toKolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Nellore,Vijayawada, Hyderabad; among others, shespent time at the Little Hearts Home forAIDS orphans in Nellore, Andhra Pradesh;the Vambay Slum outside Vijayawada;Oasis India, the Salaam Baalak Trust andAkanksha in Mumbai; the CHES Home forChildren and AIDS treatment in Chennai;and the CCD Muktaneer Home for Boys inKolkata.

“Ultimately,” says the freelance writerwho contributes to a plethora of travel pub-lications, “the way I tackled this was towrite a story that weaved together theissues themselves together with individualchildren who are affected by those issues. Ido not try to touch on everything; I just tryto give enough information to grasp theproblems, but mostly to tell the stories ofthese incredible, beautiful children.

“Their hope and resilience amazed metime and time again; the ability of theirspirits to overcome crippling challengesinspired me. Even in the most deprivedcircumstances they are still kids – theylaugh and play, if perhaps less frequentlythan others; they develop strong bondsand relationships to create family wherenone exists; and most of all, they have anenormous amount of love to give.”

If her encounters with the childrenplumbed wells of empathy deepinside of her, her interactions with

the adults working in the field of disad-vantaged youth was to teach her the les-son of humility.

One such is is Damodar Sahoo, whoruns the Miracle Foundation home inOrissa where Shelley’s own odysseybegan.

If you ask for ‘Damodar Sahoo’,chances are no one will know who youare talking about – but ask for ‘Papa’, anda dozen people will vie for the privilege oftaking you to him.

Sahoo is not a man much given to talk-ing of himself – Shelley had to probe gen-tly to uncover the story of how, way backin 1972 when he was working in the areaof distress relief, Sahoo discovered themission that was to consume his life.

“One day, while going about his workafter a cyclone had hit, he found anorphaned child lying on the roadsidenext to her dead mother,” Shelley nar-rates. “Shortly thereafter, a severe floodleft another sixteen local children home-less and parentless. Mr Sahoo and hiswife welcomed them all into their owntiny home, caring for them in addition totheir own daughter and two sons. Overthe next twenty-five years the childrencontinued to arrive, until dozens came toknow the Sahoo family as home.”

Over the years, as the Miracle

Foundation raised money for the orphan-age, building a new wing and bunk bedsand bathrooms for the children, CarolineBoudreaux and others repeatedly asked‘Papa’ to allow them to make improve-ments to his own cramped quarters, to givehim the wherewithal to make his own life alittle easier.

“No, I need nothing,” was his usualanswer.

‘Let me buy you something,’ Boudreauxpersisted.

Papa’ shook his head, and gestured at thenew dormitories Boudreaux had helpedfund, at the children in their uniforms get-ting ready to go to school.

‘You have already bought me the mostimportant thing,’ Papa told her. ‘You

bought me sleep.’‘Papa’ Sahoo is just one among dozens of

men and women working without notice,without publicity, without reward or recog-nition in this most under-served of socialarenas: people like C P Kumar, who runsthe Little Hearts home in Nellore, AndhraPradesh for AIDS orphans.

The work done by Kumar and his ilk are,Shelley found, impossible to comprehend,let alone encapsulate within the pages of abook.

“How do you explain unconditionallove?” Shelley said, when we asked aboutKumar. “How do you begin to comprehendthe forces of compassion, faith and dedica-tion that can so define a person that he willspend the hours of his life loving those

whom no else stops to notice? Those whomhe has no obligation to care about, no rea-son to work for, and no reward other thanthe knowledge that he is making somesmall dent in the endless tide of need?”

Shelley recalls standing outside a small,nondescript building on a dusty street inNellore, watching two dozen once-home-less children rushing out to greet the manwho had stood between them and thebleakest of futures.

At one of India’s hotspots in the AIDSpandemic, Kumar and his family took in 25children orphaned by the killer virus.“What was most amazing was that he didnot do this as his job, because it wasrequired of him – he did it in addition to aregular full-time position as a governmentpublic relations officer. Not only did ‘CP’not get paid for his work under HEARTS,but he and his wife Mamatha poured theirown money into the organization, and incarrying out their self-appointed missionwere now in personal debt.”

The children Shelley saw there wereyoung, ranging from four to ten years old.The oldest was an eighth grade girl calledSutrasini.

One day, Kumar read a newspaper storyabout three brothers who had recently losttheir parents to AIDS and had only an eld-erly grandfather left to support them. Thegrandfather used to work as a field laborer,

India Abroad August 7, 2009

M3THE MAGAZINE

Let me tell you the story ofone little girl that illus-trates the amazing trans-

formation that can happen in thelives of these kids when enoughcaring adults intervene.

In 2007, the Miracle Foun-dation opened a new home closeto Rourkela, Orissa. Run by DrManjeet Pardesi, the home hadonly been open a short while butwas already past capacity withchildren. “They found out we arehere,” Dr Pardesi said, referringto the local townspeople. “Thechildren, they just keep coming.”

One night at about two am,there was a loud knocking at thefront gate. Dr Pardesi, CarolineBoudreaux and some of thehouse mothers arrived at theentrance to find a police officerthere, holding a baby. The childwas naked, emaciated with star-vation and near death, bonespoking her skin up like poles sus-pending a tent.

The look in the eyes of this tinyperson, less than a year old, was far beyondinfancy. Her dark eyes radiated hopeless-ness and despair — the look of someonewho had been erased from the inside. Theonly thing in the world she possessed wasthe bean strung on a thread around herneck.

The policeman placed the skeletal childinto Caroline’s arms. The baby’s name wasSumitra; she was nine months old, but thesize of a three month infant. Her mother

had died hours earlier from a simple infec-tion. Caroline would later call Sumitra ‘thesaddest human being I have ever seen inmy life.’

After the officer left the staff tried to feedSumitra from a bottle, but she kept throw-ing up. They tried massaging her with oiluntil she relaxed. She was so weak anddehydrated she could not even cry; shesimply had no water for tears, nor theenergy to express her despair in that most

basic form.One year later, I visited Dr Pardesi’s

home outside Rourkela. As soon as Iarrived, a toddler ran up to me like aforce of nature. Her short, chubbylegs pumped underneath the rufflesof a frilly pink and green dress andher hands clapped furiously. A huge,wide-mouthed grin stole over her face

as she jumped around me,and in that smile I sensed thepure joy she felt at being alive.

I was amazed, because I rec-ognized this little girl. Herdeep, intense eyes wereunmistakable. It was Sumitra– who, a year earlier, was astarving infant who could noteven cry.

I have seen countless trans-formations just like Sumitra’s.Attitudes of cynicism ordespair can sometimes pre-vail when confronted by theenormity of such challenges;it is easy to give up, to say theproblem is insurmountable,that India’s uncared-for

young is a problem without solutions. But the truth I have found over visits to

dozens of organizations and hours uponhours of interviews, is that all over India –and beyond its borders – people are striv-ing tirelessly every day in initiatives andprograms which, if scaled up and coordi-nated and funded in full measure through-out the country, would have an immeasur-able impact on such vulnerable children’slives and futures. !

Sumitra’s storyThrough the story of one infant,Shelley Seale traces theproblem of India’s uncared foryoung – and the solution

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Damodar ‘Papa’ Sahoo, who has been providing a home to orphans for years, inspired Caroline Boudreauxto start the Miracle Foundation

Miracle child Sumitra, left, when she arrived at the orphanageand a photograph of her taken one year later

JOURNEY

At some point before my second vol-unteer trip to India in March 2006,I began thinking of taking my

daughter Chandler with me. One of thevolunteers on the first trip was a womanwith a teenage son who had been a huge

hit with the kids, because he was close inage to many of them.

I thought about how Chandler wouldlove that experience and be enriched by it,and I also knew it was a gift she would nottake lightly. So I took her back with me in2006; she was 15 at the time.

The first day in India, I was worried. Mydaughter was quiet and withdrawn, over-whelmed by the streets and the noises andthe heat, uncomfortable with the staring.She recoiled on the railway platform whena dozen taxi and rickshaw drivers besiegedus the second we stepped off the train,each hawking their services and pushingand wrestling for our bags.

Then she went completely still as twosmall children, a brother and sister, stoodin front of us with their fingers touchingtheir mouths, silently begging. Her eyesgrew round and wet, and I was afraid shewas going to crumple. I had tried to pre-pare her for it, but it was an impossibletask — like describing a painting to a blindperson. I was afraid I had made a hugemistake bringing her.

It turned out she was simply over-whelmed by the culture shock. It was bal-anced in equal measure, however, with thesplendor of intricately carved temples, themajesty of ancient palaces, the smell ofincense and curry that wafted on the warm

breezes, and the warmth and generosityof the people.

We met a family on the train whoimmediately made room for us, sharingtheir blankets and their food. By the endof the train ride we knew all about eachother’s families, like old friends. “You area visitor in our country,” the matriarchsaid, “and it is our duty to take care ofyou.”

That evening in the restaurant wherewe ate dinner, the fans and night air cool-ing us, Chai and delicious vegetable curryfilling our stomachs, Chandler began toperk up. She became talkative again,excitedly recounting our day’s adventuresas if she had not walked through them ina state of shock. From that moment onIndia was hers – and she had becomeIndia’s.

At the orphanage, Chandler was con-stantly surrounded by her ‘groupies’ – sis-ters Mami and Sumi, Rahel and Sima, allyounger girls who crowded her lap andplayed with her hair. They pulled itbetween their fingers and brushed it;braided it over and over, securing it withelastic fasteners before quickly takingthem out to refashion the style.

Older girls, too, hovered near her, ado-lescents who were much more interestedin this girl their own ages than in usadults. But they had outgrown the hand-holding and lap-sitting; by their ages it

wasn’t cool to show such enthusiasm, andso they stood nonchalantly by, missingnothing. They took any opportunity how-ever to drag Chandler back into their dormrooms to powder and henna her; to turnon Hindi pop music and show off theirintricate dance moves. It was a lot likesummer camp. We were there over Holi,and we played in earnest with the kids. Tothis day, three years later, Chandlerrecounts that as one of the most fun daysof her life.

When it came time to leave, Chandlerwas distraught – and so where the chil-dren. Rahel stood silently in front of her,offering up a bouquet of flowers with hereyes cast downward, too sad to look up atChandler. Rahel’s dejection was too muchfor my daughter, who started to cry.Throughout the following long hours oftravel Chandler wept intermittently.

“I don’t want to go home,” she sobbedthat night in the hotel. In the security lineat the Delhi airport the next day, tearsslowly leaked from her eyes and trickleddown her cheeks. She cried silently on theplane as it lifted off Indian soil and left itbehind, carrying us back home again. !

but that income was not enough to sup-port three growing boys. He was forcedtherefore to supplement his meagresalary through begging.

The AIDS label is a double blow: inhearers, it engenders both the fear ofdeath, and the social revulsion conse-quent on ignorance of the causes – a kindof modern-day scarlet letter that taintsnot just the infected, but entire genera-tions to follow.

The reporter had written of how theseboys were unwanted in the village, andurged the government to do somethingfor them. When CP called about the chil-dren, he was told that he was the onlyperson who had responded.

“I asked CP how he could possiblyaccept the three boys – he was alreadywell past capacity with the twenty-fivechildren living at Little Hearts,” Shelleyrecalled. “He gazed back at me for a longmoment of silence before answering. ‘Ifnot me, who?’ he asked. ‘If not now,when?’”

Such seminal encounters change youare unequipped to measure, Shelleyfound.

Today, she talks of herself as two per-sons in one: the “before India Shelley andthe after India Shelley”.

“The experience fundamentallychanged me and the person I was,”Shelley says. “In some ways I felt morefamiliar to myself in India, like I was nowthe person I had been brought there tobecome. I had arrived, that first time twoyears before, not really knowing what toexpect. I had not come to India to changeanything about it; instead, the countryand its people had worked a transforma-tional change in me. They had allowedme into the real heart of the place and bydoing so, spared me from viewing it withthe eyes of an outsider.

“India’s rawness of life stripped awaythe unnecessary in my life - distractions,superficial attachments, trivial worries.Without the safety net of the superficial,my life became fundamental, it wasreduced to only the essentials of being. Ibecame lost in order to find.”

The book, she says, is as much to makepersonal sense of her own life-changingexperiences as it is to awake the world toa problem not many are aware of. It is,she says, a problem not especially con-fined to India – all over the world, even inher native United States, today’s younggrow up in need of one kind or the other.

So, why India when, as her own experi-ences had informed her, there are needychildren closer to home?

Shelley recalls how, in response to anarticle she once wrote following a visit toIndia, an Indian reader wrote: ‘Why don’tyou help your own slumdogs?’

And it is not just Indians, who appar-ently believe Shelley does them a disserv-ice by drawing attention to the problem,who come up with such responses – herAmerican friends ask her why she has togo halfway around the world to do good.

“My simple answer to the question ‘WhyIndia?’ is, why not? I agree that there areplenty of problems in my own country –and I donate significant amounts of timeand money to non-profit organizationsright here at home,” Shelley says. “I havebeen a volunteer for years with CASA thatadvocates for abused children, with ChildProtective Services and many othergroups that work for marginalized chil-dren in the US.

“It’s not like I think only India has chil-dren in need or that I work only in India.But I also believe that every life, nomatter where it’s lived, has equalvalue. Extreme poverty in India isnot the same as poverty in theUnited States, and there are verylittle if any safety nets for childrenthere who fall through the cracks.Millions of children in the USaren’t generally threatened bymalaria and tuberculosis, deniededucation or trafficked, sold intofactories or domestic labor ifthey’re lucky, to brothels if they’renot. A childhood cannot wait forthe AIDS epidemic to subside, forpoverty to be eradicated, for adultsand governments to act, for theworld to notice them. Once gone,their childhoods can never beregained.

“Why India? Quite simplybecause those twenty-five millionchildren exist,” says Shelley, who inher conversations took great painsto point out that she was not com-ing from a holier-than-thoupedestal.

“My intention is not to rubIndia’s collective nose in this prob-lem, or to tell Indians how to solvethem,” Shellay insists. “My onlydesire was to give a strong andhopeful voice to these children.Foreigners, including myself, donot and cannot know what is best forIndia. It is not a matter for us to come andinstruct or order; for efforts undertakenin that way, no matter how well inten-tioned, will always fail in their arrogance.”

Foreigners, Shelley says, rarely if everunderstand the society they seek to‘improve’ – and that ignorance multipliesthe risk that they could end up imposingtheir own cultural bias on an alien cul-ture, resulting in negative consequencesfor those whose lives they seek to change.

“We should come to listen, to learn, toassist where and when asked,” Shelleysays. “If I were asked, I would say the goalof my book, and of my writings thus far, issimply to allow us to hear what thosevoices have to say.

“The stories told in this book do notbelong to me. They were given to me as agift, often because I was the only personwho had ever asked.” !

The MMiracle FFoundation ((www.miracle-foundation.org) iis bbased aat 11506 WW 66thStreet, AAustin, TTexas 778703; PPhone: ++001512 3329-88635. FFor mmore oon TThe WWeightof SSilence, vvisit hhttp://weightofsilence.wordpress.com/

Shelley Seale’s empathy for children was a gift fromher mother Sandra – a gift she passed on to herdaughter

The story of Chandler!M3

Shelley Seale’s daughter Chandler with a MiracleFoundation child

Teardrops on the cheek of TimeIndia Abroad August 7, 2009

M5THE MAGAZINE JOURNEY