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Where are you, mom??!!

Michael Gonsalves in Pune

In 1982, he was an unknowing, uncaring three year old, strapped into a transcontinental flight heading off to his foster home in Holland.

Today, Jayant van Peperstraten is back in Pune, all of 19, full grown and hell bent on tracing his real mother.

It's not that he doesn't love the rich couple who adopted him, or thinks of them as anything other than his parents. But the dark complexioned, smartly dressed youngster, who speaks only Dutch and a smattering of English, is still determined to find his 'birth mother', to succeed in his 'mission'.

"I cannot describe you how important it is for me to find my own mother, who brought me into this world," he says, seeking deep within himself for words in the unfamiliar English. "I miss her terribly and I must find her!"

Sixteen years ago, his mother was moved by no such feelings when she abandoned her three-year-old son on the doorstep of the Pune-based, state government-owned Sassoon General Hospital.

"Even though I cannot remember her face, I have been haunted by my mother," says Jayant, haltingly. "After seeing the Indian mothers here for the first time, I imagine my simple village mother too must be tall, thin, dark, wearing a sari and sporting long dark hair.

"I do not know either Marathi or Hindi, the languages spoken here, but when we do meet, the language barrier will be overcome as our hearts will recognise each other," says Jayant, whose commitment to his mission is touching albeit, to worldly-wise journalistic eyes, a trifle naive.

Not so naive are Jayant's companions on the expedition. "When we left Holland for India, we were extremely happy that Jayant would at last be able to fulfil his dreams of uniting with his birth-mother," says his Dutch uncle Mario van Diessen, 33, who along with wife Nita, 30, accompanied Jayant to Pune, landing here on July 11.

"When Jayant's foster father and mother entrusted me the task of finding his Indian mother as I travel abroad often, we all thought we would just land up in Pune, look up the records, the registers, find the address, hire a cab and zoom to the village and search for his mother. But except finding her first name, the search has exhausted us with no reason. In this case, I think it would be lot more easier to find a needle in a haystack."

Mario runs a catering business in Zwanenburg, Holland, with his wife's support.

Recalling that Jayant grew up as any normal kid in his foster home, he became obsessed with finding his Indian mother about four years ago. "Every child separated from his parents for one reason or the other has this strong feeling of wanting to know his real parents, and it is important that Jayant knows that we have done everything to find his mother," Mario says.

The lad himself says that his mission owes to a call of the roots, rather than any real lack in his adoptive home. "My loving, caring foster parents never hid the fact that I was an adopted child right from the beginning, when began to understand about my real identity," he says. "But I cannot escape the overwhelming feeling that I want to find my own mother."

Jayant was adopted from Shreevatsa, an orphanage attached to the Sassoon General Hospital, when he was three.

"Jayant was abandoned by his mother in one of the wards of the hospital," recalls Dipika Maharajsingh, managing committee member of Shreevatsa. "He was very sick, and suffering from all kinds of diseases."

He was admitted to hospital, officially, on September 25, 1982. After trying to find the mother, hospital authorities registered a police case, issued an ad in the local papers, and then took charge of the ailing child.

Once the Pune district judge officially declared Jayant destitute, he was handed over to Kees and Ria van Peperstraten in 1982 for adoption, as per the adoption rules governing foreign foster parents.

The best that Maharajsingh can do, by way of tracing the lad's mother, is to hazard a guess that she probably hailed from Satara.

With what little information they could glean, Mario, Nita and Jayant, accompanied by a social worker, went to Nandgaon in Satara district, western Maharashtra, but none of the villagers there could help them in their search. Advertisements in the local papers, with Jayant's baby picture, hasn't yielded results either.

"I would like to come back to Pune after finishing my university degree and find a job here so that I can continue my search," says Jayant, not one whit unfazed by failure. "Besides, I like the place, and the people are so friendly and warm here."

None of this is particularly new for Maharajsingh. "It is a natural phenomenon among teenagers to find out about their identities," she says. "We try to help them find their mothers, if there was no written confidentiality between the parents and the Shreevatsa authorities at the time of the adoption."

As of now, there are 75 children at Shreevatsa waiting for adoption.

"In the last seven months, 44 children have been adopted by Indian parents, another four by American and Swedish couples," the orphanage head said, pointing out that the increasing tendency of Indian parents to adopt was a healthy one.

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