Parentless

Shoba - Her story and her song ===============================

Shoba is seven year old. We still remember the day she walked into our home with her guardian. She was very sad and quiet. It did not take a long time to figure out that she was carrying a deep hurt within her. Her father passed away when she was very young and since her mother was in a depression and had no job, she couldn't take care of her daughter. So she decided to drop shoba at a relative's house.

Her relatives started mistreating the girl, getting her to do all the domestic chores and also sending her to the local toddy shop (liquor) to buy toddy everyday.

The mother heard about these things but couldn't do anything about it because she had already got married to another man. Her new husband abandoned her within a few months when she was pregnant with twins and never returned.

This was Shoba's situation when she moved in with us.

But Shoba has started going to school and found couple of friends and...

When Devayani moved in with us, we took her to the doctor for vaccination and medical check-up. During the check-up, the doctor found out that she had split sounds in her heart beat and referred us to a cardiologist. After going through few tests, echo-cardiograph and the scan, we found out that she had a hole in her heart referred to as Atrial Septal Defect (ASD). It is a birth heart defect. Because of ASD, extra blood passes into the lungs causing higher pressure thus damaging the lungs.

Because the hole was big, open heart surgery was her only option. We got her admitted to the hospital on 3rd August. The hospital wanted us to bring Devayani’s mother to sign the consent papers. But tracking her down was a nightmare. She refused to come to the hospital because she had to cook for her son who is 20 yrs old.  We finally convinced her to go to the hospital and sign the papers. She seemed very upset with her daughter because of her medical condition. She told her daughter that she delivered 8 babies  and...