Perhaps one day, when Aami is older, she will ask her parents why she has two birthdays. That day, they will tell her gently that one is the day she was born and the other the day she came to them. Rejith, an assistant professor of Economics in Kerala, began a Facebook post with this thought about Aami, his second child. An infant that he and his wife Dhanya adopted when their elder child Karthu was eight years old. The moving story of adoption has since gone viral, with thousands of people sharing it online.
"During the long years that Dhanya and I were in a relationship, we asked each other a question, what will we do if we don't have children after marriage. Without a doubt, we knew we would adopt a child. We both loved children that much. Karthu was born to us soon after marriage. But due to health issues, it was not possible to have a second child," Rejith writes in his post on Friday that's since been shared over four thousand times.
It was when Karthu was six that the parents noticed how lonely she had felt being a single child. On a visit to an ice cream parlour, she watched three siblings at the next table have fun and began to cry. Rejith and Dhanya asked her if she'd like to have a younger sister and Karthu was jubilant. That's when they registered to adopt a child.
They had to wait a long time for the online allotment to bring them Aami. She was then a year old and living in a convent. Before she reached their home, her future family visited her at the convent so she wouldn't feel they are strangers. It worked. They thought that she might find it hard to sleep in a new place. But the night that Aami came home, she slept clutching Dhanya, making those moments some of the most memorable for the family.
It has been three years since Aami got adopted. The question of whether they'd be able to accept and love her as their own does not even seem relevant anymore, Rejith writes. She has become that much a part of all three of their lives. They call her Aami, Kunchi and Chakkara - all sweet names used for little kids in Kerala.
Rejith who works in Kerala would call his family in Mumbai and hear Aami's sweet voice ask, "Is it father, Amma?"
"The joy I feel in those moments can never be replaced by anything else. When she says my father, my mother, the stress on the 'my' in her words brings joy and sorrow at the same time."
Years later when she realises that they are not related to her by blood, she'd see their undiminished love for her, Rejith writes. "We had decided earlier that we'd shower her with a lot of love to compensate for the first year in her life when she had no one. And that we would celebrate the day she came to our lives every year.”
What made him write the post now are stories of childless couples who take their lives and people who hesitate to adopt children fearing the opinions of relatives and a harsh society. "If you like children, you don't have to seek far for the key to happiness," he writes.
He can’t say enough of the joy that Aami has brought to their lives. If when they die they reach another world and get asked the question ‘what did you most love doing in your life’, they'd say that it was bringing Aami into their lives, Rejith says. "Aami who jumps onto the lap of her mother who'd be seriously working in front of her office laptop and says 'smile, Amma', Aami who hugs Karthu and says 'I love Chechi kutty the most' - the happiness that our four-year-old Chiri Kutty brings us cannot be measured. I want to tell my Aami what Madhavan's character told his daughter Amuda in Kannathil Mutthamittal. We didn't adopt you, you adopted us," Rejith writes, ending his note.