CHENNAI: With close to 65 women housed in their establishment in Thiruverkadu and plenty of children studying in their institutions, Udhavum Karangal is one of the few that look after both mother and child and rehabilitate them, if the occasion arises. Looking back at all their rescued mothers and now-grown children, it is evident that most of them may have given up all hope in their families and the world in general, but as long as they have the patronage of ‘papa’ Vidyaakar, all will be well. These are four of the most compelling sets of mother-children that we met at the NGO, on their monthly meet-the-parents session. The Gurkha lady on duty: At first glance, there is something menacing about the lady with a stiff cap, firm frown and large lathi, seated outside the womens’ quarters. Janaki, as she was christened, after she was rescued near Coimbatore in 1990, is believed to be of Nepali descent. She was found with her daughter Sushma, who has now graduated with a diploma in ophthalmology and is working at the centre. That she still holds a stigma of the past is evident from the way she barks “po” when we speak to her daughter, but it is unmistakable, the way she smiles fondly, when she looks at the woman her daughter has blossomed into.The ‘Tsunami’ lady: When reports reached the UK team in December 2006, that a ‘mad’ lady with a child was wandering near the shore at Kalpakkam, they rushed to the spot. What they found was a woman with a new-born baby, who had survived the tsunami but could reveal no detail about herself or her past. “We were clueless about what to do with her so we named her Tsunami, as a reminder of what she had survived,” says Vidyaakar. Today, Tsunami still remains clueless about her origin and what happened that fateful day, but her five-year daughter Samudra is all set for primary school soon and is expected to do well, because she is one of the “smart ones around.”Abandoned at the bus-stand: The story of how three-year-old Selvam was born is one that caused a furor back in 2008; his mother Selvi, had crashed into a corner of the Thiruverkadu bus stand and had given birth there naturally, after going into labour. Her only companions were her two other young children Jyothi and Maheshwari. According to a volunteer, her husband is believed to have been a labourer who abandoned her on a bus after they migrated to Chennai for work. Not knowing what to do, the disturbed lady then sought shelter with her new-born and two others till someone spotted her and tipped the NGO off. All three children are being educated and the eldest dreams of being an “engineer”.The cancer-victim who told her daughter she was dying: There are not many mothers who would tell their children when they have sicknesses; lesser still when the disease is the dreaded breast cancer and the child is well-below 10 years. “When my relatives began ignoring me and began deciding how to divide my property, I decided that my daughter would have to fend for herself,” says Kalavathi, who fled her home in Palani with her daughter Chandrakala. On the verge of committing suicide and steeling her daughter for that eventuality, she kept telling her daughter that she would have to “raise herself”. After she walked into Udhavum Karangal seeking only care for her daughter, she was surprised when they took both of them in and are even footing her chemotherapy bills. “This is a favour that not even my daughter can repay,” said the tearful widow. Her only ray of light is her daughter, now in Class 6 who is bent on being a doctor who will “find the cure for cancer” so that no more mothers need to leave their little girls.
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