India's Invisible Children

I never expected to be in India. And without a doubt, I never thought once I had been I would return, again and again. It wasn’t the exotic beauty that drew me back. It wasn’t the warmth of the people or their open hospitality. It wasn’t the storied, ancient history of the country or its rich culture. It was not the colors or the spices or the sounds or the spirituality of the place. India is all of these things, to be sure, and I have grown to love them all. But they were not what seeped into my being and pulled me close, becoming a part of me that I missed with a strange emptiness when I left. It was the children. They are everywhere. They fill the streets, the railway stations, the shanty villages. Some scrounge through trash for newspapers, rags or anything they can sell at traffic intersections. Others, often as young as two or three years old, beg. Many of them are homeless, overflowing orphanages and other institutions to live on the streets. Amidst the growing prosperity of India, there is an entire generation of parentless children growing up, often forced into child labor and prostitution – more than twenty-five million in all. They are invisible children, their plight virtually unnoticed by the world, their voices silenced. And in the small town in the northeastern state of Orissa where I arrived with ten other Miracle Foundation volunteers, one man named Damodar Sahoo had dedicated his life to providing some sort of family for one hundred of these children. The moment we arrived dozens of children crowded the cars, waving and chanting "welcome" over and over. I opened the door and they were all around me, touching my feet in blessing. Overwhelmed and unsure what to do, I blindly followed behind "Papa" Sahoo as he led the way. It was almost surreal, and happening so quickly I didn't have time to look around or get any sense of where I was in the darkness. There were just the children, all around, and my feet moving forward until we arrived at a prayer room. The volunteers removed our shoes and followed the group into the room, where the kids were already lining themselves up along rugs on the floor. I was handed a small bouquet of red roses and marigolds, and led to a spot on the mats. A housemother lit incense at the altar while a boy blew a horn softly. Everyone sat up straighter and ceased any fidgeting or whispering. Then the prayers began. It started with a simple chant: "Om....om..," the small voices resonating deeply. The chanting gave way to a song, the sweet voices dancing in the air while my eyes traveled over the faces around me. I wondered when each of them had stopped wanting to go home, or if they ever had. As much of a loving community as the ashram seemed, it was not the family that most of the children had once known, distant and ghostly memories for the most part. Home is a fragile concept – far more delicate than those of us who have always had one can imagine. When a person no longer has a home, when his family is taken from him and he is deprived of everything that was home, then after a while wherever he is becomes home. Slowly, the pieces of memory fade, until this strange new place is not strange anymore; it becomes harder to recall the past life, a long ago family, until one day he realizes he is home.

Shelley S. ( Seattle , Washington , United States )