ABSTRACT
On a trip to India in 1996 to attend a conference on international adoption, Swaran Chaudhry, Secretary of the Society for Indian Children’s Welfare (SICW) in Calcutta, recounted for me what she described as a “success story.” Chaudhry, a strong advocate for protecting the internationally adopted child’s sense of her origins in India, had previously referred to the increasing visibility of adoptees who return to the institutions where they were cared for, and described the return visit as a process that “cements a child in its identity.” Chaudhry’s “success story” involved a “failed” adoption or an “almost” adoption. It involved a sixyear-old boy, Sheik Mofiz, who lived with his mother in Taldi village, near the Howrah Bridge. His father drove a cycle-van in Calcutta. On July 21, 1994, Mofiz ran out of his house after being scolded by his mother and climbed onto a bus in hopes of finding his father in the city. When the bus reached the end of the line and he was still on it, the driver took him to a police station. Eventually, he was transferred to a home for abandoned children, and some months later sent to SICW, which places Indian children for adoption either domestically or overseas.
