She is from New Jersey, a physician by profession. She has retired from her work and has decided to invest all her savings for the orphans. Yes, Michelle has decided to spend the rest of her life, taking care of helpless and abandoned children in her orphanage-Sishur Sevay in Kolkata. The first time I met her she hugged me and said namashkar. She was wearing a simple cotton sari and except for her accent and her skin colour there was nothing that could differentiate her from an ordinary Bengali mother. Everybody calls her mummy. I was touched by her enthusiasm and simplicity.

She first developed her love for India from her adopted Indian daughter. She was a Bengali and Michelle proudly showed me her snaps. I watched how love and quality life could change everything. I saw a confident, vibrant young girl smiling back at me.

As Michelle says, “One of my hopes in coming to India to do this work was to show my daughter that India does care about its orphans. I wanted to refute what many Indian adopters feel, that India simply did not want them.”

Michelle has built a two-storied house for the orphans. She is sitting ready for her children. The rooms of the orphanage, the beds, the new mattresses, the dolls, the well-equipped kitchen, the marble-floored bathroom; all gives the impression of a newly built home, cozy and inviting.

Thanks to our bureaucracy, she has not yet received a single child for her orphanage. I fail to understand all the formalities, but I am sure there is a way out and Michelle with her grit and determination will make it happen.

Apart from her orphanage, she sponsors dozens of children in other organizations. She has donated thousands of rupees for the ailing and the sick.

As Michelle says, “I have paid for five operations, six hospitalizations (at least) and kept one old woman alive for two years on blood transfusions I paid for. At one time, I joked about wanting a group rate at Woodlands Hospital. I have said no when I needed to. Many people are angry with me for not paying for their healthcare… a kind of entitlement people feel when they learn I have paid for others. This comes with the territory. The alternative is to not give, which I won’t do. Saying no is difficult but I do it regularly.”

For her orphanage, she wants to stick to some principles. She wants only orphan, someone who does not have any living relation. There are numerous instances, where the parents are too poor to support the child and send them to an orphanage. When the child is grown up, they try to claim them back. Michelle is against this idea.

“The truth is that I just want the children. I am being very stubborn with the government in refusing to take non-orphans, for many reasons. I know the orphans are there, and I know they need care they are not getting, so I just keep pushing in different ways. But that's mostly what I think about, plan, strategize about.” 

Michelle visited on adoption orphanage and sent me a mail with the photos and her observation:

“These children reside in an adoption orphanage. They have been offered to Indian families but have been rejected. The little girl I’m holding is Hepatitis B+, as are 10% of children in Kolkata. The little girl on the right has some form of Thalassemia, or Thalassemia Trait. For these reasons they will not be adopted by an Indian family. They are also now too old for Indian adoption, and the girl I’m holding is considered too dark for Indian adoption. 

These children are truly abandoned. They were rejected by their biological families. Indian adopting families did not want them. They sit as unwanted inventory in an adoption business, tied to windows and cribs. 

I have shown these pictures and more to several government officials. I understand that the government can do nothing. If they intervene, the children will have to go to Sukanya, where as we learned, the medical care is inadequate. These children would likely die under those conditions.

Next, on a professional level, I cannot as a physician turn away these children because of their health needs, as they are ones I feel fully able to support financially, and in terms of finding the right care. I do not practice medicine here, but I also do not leave my knowledge behind.”