I’ve known I was adopted since before I knew what adoption was. I didn’t think much about it until I was seven years old. Like most adopted children, I wanted to know about my birth mother and why she gave me up. Sometimes, I would start crying because I thought she had given me up because she hated me. Now, at age 14, I hardly ever think about her. I’ve just wiped my memory clear of thinking about her; it was too painful...

When my eighth-grade teacher had us choose a topic to research, I had no clue what I would choose. There were so many things I wanted to learn more about, such as the environment, endangered species, and music. After my trip to India in December 2001 though, I knew exactly what I wanted to focus my research on. I decided to find out more about the orphanage I came from in Kolkata.

Not many people here in New England were born halfway around the world. There isn’t very much exposure here to different cultures, and by hearing all this, I knew that my fellow students would gain a broader knowledge of a faraway place.

I felt that my trip to the children’s home there was an important learning experience, because by visiting, I learnt how kind and loving all the nurses are to the babies and older children. It meant a lot to me to meet some of the people who had loved me and taken care of me as an infant.

Finding The Links
When I was four months old, I arrived in Vermont from what was then Calcutta. I was picked up at Logan Airport in Boston by my adoptive mother, Shelby Grantham.

In the December of 2001, when I was 13, I got to go back to India. It was my first time back there since I was born. A friend of my mother named Subbiah Swaminathan and his American wife Sarah Robson, who lived in our town of Norwich, Vermont, invited our family to go with them and their two daughters to the south of India, where he had been born and raised.

My older brother, Evan Grantham-Brown, 26, who works in Indiana, decided not to join us. He doesn’t like to travel. Subbiah and his mother, Sushila Swaminathan, in Madurai, India, organised the whole trip (except for the Kolkata part, which my mother organised).

I was both nervous and excited about finally going back to India, back to the country I had been born in. I was nervous about flying after September 11th. But I was also excited about seeing India and meeting new people.

We were in the southern part of India most of the time, but my mother, sister, and I went to Kolkata halfway through the trip. We got to Kolkata by taking the Pandian Express from Madurai to Chennai, and then the Coromandel Express from Chennai to Kolkata. The train ride took two days and two nights. We arrived at Howrah station in Kolkata on Christmas morning, planning to stay for three nights and four days.

We were met at the train station by Rang Nath Singh, the assistant director of International Mission of Hope (IMH). He has been assistant director for 10 years. He owns a small hotel at which people visiting IMH and other guests can stay, though he gives preference to those visiting IMH. There were four guest rooms on the floor we were on and a dining room that connected them.

The rooms were nice, and the two rooms we stayed in led onto a small balcony that overlooked some small houses. Mr Singh was a wonderful host and provided us with whatever we needed. When we told him about our strange vegan diet, he gave the cook, Mr Dass, special instructions on what to cook with and then went out and bought us three huge plates of fruit. Mr Dass was very nice and made wonderful food the whole time we were there.

Back To Where I Came From
I was nervous about being so far away from home. I had only seen pictures of Kolkata, and all the pictures made the city look poor, crowded, littered and polluted, and they showed lots and lots of beggars and people living on the streets. I’m not sure why, but the beggars were one of the things I was most worried about. I thought many of them would have physical deformities.

When we were in Kolkata, no beggars came up to us, but there were beggars in Chennai and Madurai who did. We had decided before the trip that we would always give those who begged money, and that’s what we did.

The beggars we met were very polite. Most of them didn’t have deformities, but one beggar woman at the Shri Meenakshi Temple in Madurai carried a young daughter whose foot was misshapen. The mother spoke very good English and said a bus had run over her daughter’s foot. She gave me and my sister flowers for our hair.

The very first day we were in Kolkata, we got to visit IMH. I thought that the children’s home would be noisy and a little overcrowded, but when I got there, I was surprised at how quiet it was. One of the head ‘massis’ (aunts) met us at the door and took us to the nursery.

It was weird going back to somewhere I’d been but had no recollection of. I was surprised that there were not many babies — only about 30. Everyone was polite, but a little tense, because I think everyone was nervous to be meeting strangers. We had brought photos of IMH that had been taken 10 or more years ago, and when we brought them out, the ‘massis’ all loosened up and started pointing out people they remembered and laughing over themselves 10 years younger.

The ‘massis’ were all very nice and let us hold the babies. After visiting the babies, we went to see the older children. Almost all of them had disabilities, such as blindness and cerebral palsy. The ‘massis’ were really nice to the children and babies. It was not at all like the stereotypical orphanages you see or hear about in ‘Annie’ and ‘Oliver Twist’. All the children had plenty to eat and warm clothes. I got to visit every day I was there.

Kolkata was noisy and polluted with car exhaust, and there was a lot of litter. The traffic was very slow and often stopped completely. But I’m glad I went, because seeing where I came from made me feel special. I hope I get to go back to India again some time soon.

GOT COMMENTS OR QUESTIONS? E-MAIL US AT femina@timesgroup.com WITH ‘links — a trip to the land of my birth’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE