My family isn’t created through blood, but through love and through treasuring the time we have with one another, like each grain of sand in the hourglass: precious and fleeting. We look so much like a biological family that when I tell someone that I’m adopted I constantly have been given the response that I am a liar. Because of this, we say that we truly are a “rab ne bana di jodi” kind of family. Translated this means that we are a match made in heaven, and I would not ever want it any other way.

 

 

My mom is unable to have children due to a medical condition; however, she and my dad knew they wanted to start a family of their own. Meanwhile, in India my biological mother found out she was pregnant, she nor the father were planning to have a baby (much less twins). Once their families found out, they demanded to get rid of my sister and I or they would be disowned and left to fend for themselves. The mother gave birth to us and we were sent to an orphanage in Mumbai called “Asha Sadan” which translated from Hindi to English means “House of Hope.”

 

My grandmother, on my mothers’ side, was living in Mumbai at the time. She knew my mom wanted to adopt, so she was helping with some of the groundwork while my mother and father were getting information and whatever else they could back in Calgary. My grandmother had an appointment with an orphanage but that morning she did not want to go. She kept on going to different orphanages and kept on getting turned down since India had just recently closed its abroad adoptions. This is due to the fact that a Swedish couple adopted children from India to use them for child pornography. My grandmother had grown tired of the rejections, and going out in the humid heat, and telling my mother and father the consistent “no” but she decided to go for that one last appointment. She arrived at Asha Sadan with low hopes but masquerading it as passion as she told the officials of my parents and their aspirations and capabilities to be a mom and dad. When she was done, they decided to show her around the orphanage. They wound up meeting my sister and me and she knew that we were the ones. She called my mom and dad and they agreed right away so after screening and all the paperwork we became a legal family.

 

On the day we turned 6 months old (the legal age one must be to be able to leave the orphanage and get adopted) my mom was there to pick up my sister and I from Asha Sadan accompanied with her mother. The next big step would be was to get us our Visas, so they started the process right away since it would take months to get. My mom obviously wanted to be back to Calgary as fast as possible, so she hoped that the Visas wouldn’t take too long. She and one of my uncles went to the courthouse to get our documents in order. One thing to note about my uncle would be that because of his work and the type of person he is, he got sued… a lot. Because of this, he knew the ins and outs of the court system, the people in it, and how to speed things along. All said and done, instead of waiting months for our Visas, he miraculously procured them for us in a matter of weeks.

 

The last step before heading to Calgary was to get our passports; however, this couldn’t be done where we were so my mom had to travel to a neighbouring state. They planned it as such that my mom would go there, get the passports, head back to Mumbai to get my sister and I, and then we would head to London since it was one of our crossovers to get to Calgary. That was the plan, it was calculated and logical. In a utopia, it would be have been like a river, constantly and steadily flowing with a natural rhythm. In reality, the plane to get to the place with the passports couldn’t land because of the weather; it just kept circling around. My mom was sitting next to a chatty man, which at first she didn’t really mind, until he said “oh I sure hope the plane lands this time. It was like this yesterday and we eventually had to turn around right back to Mumbai.” Because of the plan, we couldn’t wait a day, so my mom started to panic just a little bit. While my mom was stranded in the air, her friend who came to the airport to pick her up and drive her to obtain the passports from the office was busy on the phone with that office. It was closing time and they were telling her they needed to hurry up or they would leave. My mom’s friend kept on saying that she could “see the plane, yes yes it has just landed we will see you in a few minutes.” Of course, this carried on for a few hours. Finally, the plane managed to land so they rushed over to the office. They zoomed inside and thanked the people who stayed late. They nodded and smiled, but they had that twinkle in their eye which said don’t come back and probably some more colourful words.

 

My mom returned to Mumbai with no problems and we all got to London safe and sound. From London, we had to go to Toronto to take a flight to reach Calgary. The plane to get to Toronto was late, and when my mom finally got in the YYZ airport, she found out that the terminal to get to Calgary was on the opposite side of where she was. To put this in perspective, my mom is trying to get to the terminal with bags of luggage and two screech crying babies without a stroller because the cabin crew lost it.  Doubt is starting to creep their dangerous fingers through my mom’s coursing veins; she wasn’t going to make the flight it seemed impossible, but she started to go anyway. Then, like a chariot of gold flown by eight Pegasi, hope returns in the form of an airport golf cart. She flagged the cart down and asked for a ride with hope overflowing in her eyes. The man driving the cart said no. Then he started to drive off again while my mom still clinging to us and our luggage began to have a little bit of a breakdown, now she knew there was zero hope to make that flight. The man turned around again and looked into my mom’s eyes, then got out, nodded, helped put all of her belongings inside the cart, and then they zipped through the airport as fast as they could. My mom was still late and there was a bit of a delay because of that but we were on the plane, we were going home.

 

Before we left Mumbai, my mom called my dad and promised him that we would be on the ground in Calgary before Christmas, no matter what. That thought was the one and only fact in this whole messed up equation of the journey, so she used it as her rock to help her stay grounded. She was determined for that to come true and I guess God or some supernatural being or whatever you want to call it was rooting for that too, because the plane landed in Calgary precisely on December 24th, 2003 at 11:59 pm.

 

 

 

Featured image: https://gifer.com/en/TiMc