I write today with a sense of bittersweetness and great joy. And probably a heavy dose of melodrama. But it's 4:30 am.
On Monday, I received an email at 2 am from Freedom Foundation with a simple note that Girish's adoption had become final, and that he will be leaving for Sweden the next day.
(That's him on his birthday.)
Girish was the first child to open up to me at Freedom, an effervescent 15 year old who spoke English. One morning I found him sick and home from school with a (very common) viral fever, and with him my love for the children began and my sense of home at Freedom began to take root. That day I learned that he was from Mumbai. That his father used to repair televisions in a small rundown booth on the side of the road. That his mother was beautiful and loving. And that he had a younger brother, named Ganesh, who had been adopted by a Swedish family 4 years earlier. He told me that after his parents both died of AIDS when he was 9 or 10, he tried to make ends meet by cleaning tables in shoddy roadside dhabas, and lived on the streets with Ganesh.
But he was not hardened. He was not cynical, he was not suspicious, dishonest or conniving. He was a fantastic 15 year old. (Well, to be honest, we found out that he was actually 14 the month before I left.)
I would plug in my little Indian cellphone into my laptop and we would get on the internet, and I would do the best that I could to show him where Sweden was on the world map. To find pictures of Stockholm. To explain that Sweden was cold as balls. To calculate the time it would take to fly there. To explain that it was so cold that ice on the river would be so thick that you could walk on it.And then, of course, he would start begging me to play Half-Life. (And eventually Half-Life 2, when my mother shipped it to me for Christmas. Incidentally, I beat Half-Life, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, and Half-Life 2 in India. A group of 22 children stood behind me and watched the whole thing. Actually, the kids beat Half-Life 2.
Except for the hard parts. That's him wearing the orange checkered shirt. Behind the clump of children is a laptop displaying an unholy war unfolding in Half-Life 2. )
To get back to the story, Girish's little bro Ganesh lived in Sweden with a Swedish family. When Girish was 10 and Ganesh was about 6, the Indian government allowed the family to adopt only Ganesh even though the Swedish family desperately wanted to keep the brothers together: But Girish had HIV, Ganesh did not, and Indian government policy did not allow HIV+ children to be adopted. So Freedom fought for 5 years to let the family adopt Girish. Last week they won.
Girish was the second oldest child. Murugesh was the oldest (17), Girish was second (15), and Suresh was third (14). The rest of the children basically clumped around the ages of 8-11, so these three formed the ruling triumvirate: a group of the first generation of adolescent HIV+ teenagers struggling to forge a path that had never, ever been attempted or possible. HIV+ children just didn't live past 6 in a country like India. And HIV did not appear in India until 1986. But more importantly, Murugesh relied on Girish.
As the oldest, most responsible, and most talented of the children, Murugesh had a sidekick in Girish. Girish was the only other HIV+ boy who was facing the same uncontrollable sex drive; the only other person who could compete with him in cricket; the only other person who could help him control the rest of the children and carry the burden of maturity and responsibility. And now he Girsh is leaving to Sweden. And I know Murugesh is heartbroken.The other miracle about Girish is that he is in perfect health in spite of his HIV-status. Most of the children had begun anti-retroviral therapy by the ages of 6-10, as their CD4 (immune system) cell count dropped into AIDS range (<200) and viral suppression therapy was necessary to bring them back to functional immunity. Yet Girish, at the age of 15, still inexplicably managed to maintain a normal CD4 count without treatment. A miraculous anomaly in the world of HIV.
And now he will be leaving Freedom Foundation to start a new life with a new family in Sweden. He will have his brother back, and a new (blonde) sister, a new mother, and a new father. With Swedish medicine and his miraculous health, Girish may live to see 30, 40, or even 50. Or, in my dream of dreams, Girish may live to see a cure for HIV. And Girish may write me an email when I am 65, and he is 55, still calling me Jay Uncle. I could even meet him for coffee one day, as an adult. This is a source of joy. Girish finally has all the love, care, and medicine he needs.
But the mere existence of this miracle leads inexorably to the conclusion that the other children may not be so fortunate. They have lost part of their unique family. The big brother that most of them have know for the past 5 years. And Girish will certainly have to watch his adopted brothers and sisters succumb to a virus, with his experience in Sweden leading him to the awareness that they didn't have to: Prasanna Kumar, Harshini, Shafi, Shaziya, Murugesh, Varsha, Suresh, Deepthi, Saritha, Saraswathi, Harshita, Raju, Anitha, Gautam, Karthik, Punitha, Annappa, Rajesh, Vishal, and Abdul Gaffar...
There is so much more to say that I'm tempted to write another 10,000 words...but I think I've said enough. All I wanted to do was share the significance of a triumph.
My heart races right now just thinking about what has happened in Girish's life in the past 48 hours. Born into a loving family, he lost his family to HIV at 10, lost his brother to Indian emigration policy, and moved into a rundown HIV hospital on the outskirts of a third-world city...and just a day ago, he boarded a plane to one of the most advanced industrial countries in the world. The kid who was so stunned and enthralled by the Spiderman movies and computer games is now entering a new world. A world full of Swedish speakers. Blondes. Neo-nazis. Socialism. A new school. A new culture. Jews. A new life. Eating meat 3 times a day. Clean streets. Supermarkets. Cable television. High-speed internet. A brother who speaks Swedish. But most importantly, he has a new family who has fought for 5 long years to win the chance to take him...and now he has a chance to start over.
So I'm happy. A wonderful human being has been given a chance for a wonderful life. There isn't much more we can ask for.
