'I just want to see my mum once'

Mother plays an important role in any child and parting from the mother is undoubtedly the most painful experience in life. Bhakti V Hegde writes about a girl’s quest to trace her biological mother, over the last eight years.

No matter who my mother is, what she does, how she is I just want to see her once and say thank you for giving birth to me and being with me for six long years. I shared beautiful bond with her and I know she never wanted to let go of me. If we have parted from each other and we have not been able reconcile it is because something somewhere has gone wrong,” says Maria Chaya Schupp, 36-years old Indian born German citizen who has been on a look out for her biological mother over the last eight years. 

This young lady doing her Ph.D on sex workers in Mumbai from a University in Germany makes frequent visits to coastal city of Mangalore in search of that one face that is engraved so deeply in her memory.

“I walk blankly on streets staring at faces in Mangalore, jut to find that one face that is so fresh in my memory,” says Chaya.

It was in 1981, when Chaya was six-years old that she was given on international adoption to Wolfgang Schupp and Ingrid Schupp of Germany by Nirmala Social Welfare Centre through a Germany based agency named Pro Infante.

In 2004 Chaya came to India for the first time along with her adoptive mother Ingrid Schupp in search of her biological mother and started her search. However, over the last eight years though Chaya has not left any stone unturned, she has not been able to gather much details about her mother.

She says that when she first visited Nirmala Centre seeking for records she had to return empty handed as the sisters said that they did not have records. After this, she returned in 2006 and approached the Centre again, which too was futile. This time, the Centre told Chaya that they do not have any records because the records of the year 1981 were washed away in a flood.

However, the documents that Chaya could get from her adopted parents show that she was an abandoned Roman Catholic kid. But Chaya’s version is that she had a mother who had voluntarily left her at the Centre seeking better future for her daughter. She says that she was a Hindu and she was baptized by the authourities of the Centre at a Church near Ullal, for which she holds documents. She also adds that the documents that her adopted parents possessed did not have surrender certificate from her mother.

However, speaking to Deccan Herald, Sr Albert from Nirmala, who was present at the Centre during Chaya’s adoption says, “I was working at Nirmala from 1973 to 81 and five kids were brought from Kerala for adoption. One of them was Chaya and she was given on adoption to a German couple. But details on the Child were not known. Whatever I had known about her adoption I had told her,” said Sr Albert. However, Chaya continues to jostle between the memories of her past and tries to put together pieces together despite being unable to come to terms with the dichotomy.