Adopting Internationally

After his first wife died leaving him without an heir, the landowning Jay Reddy took to himself a second wife. Though she came from a village in the neighboring district, to the people of tiny Kuvampalle village, Parmita might as well have come from the other side of the world. No one knew her family nor her story. In a place where everyone knows everything about everyone, and where everyone is connected to everyone by blood and loyalty ties, this would eventually be a problem.

But Jay Reddy, for his part, was happy with his wife. Because Parmita had arrived with two already existing children, the toddler Manjara and the four-month-old Lakshmi, Jay was at last a father. Jay and Parmita raised the young girls to believe that they were Jay's offspring. Jay must have hoped that together he and Parmita would have more children, perhaps even the male heir he desired, but this was not to be. Manjara and Lakshmi remained Jay's only children.

The literacy rate for women in Medak district even today in 2005 is below fifty percent. But in those days, in all of Kuvampalle village, there was according to the Indian census published in 1961, only one literate woman. It is not surprising, therefore, that Manjara and Lakshmi were not sent to school and never became literate.

As has been the case for thousands of years in thousands of rural villages in India, marriage came, and indeed still comes, early to the girls of Kuvampalle village. Most are married at age 14, a year after their first periods. When the Reddy's eldest daughter Manjara came of age, a suitable match was found for her in a nearby village. Manjara, according to custom, moved to her husband's village and into her parents-in-law's house, to become a part of their family. Manjara would subsequently bear her husband three children before dying an early death.

Now only Lakshmi remained. Because Jay had no male heirs, it was important that Lakshmi be matched to a man who would, contrary to custom but according to need, come and stay in Kuvampalle village to help farm, to become a part of Jay's family, and to inherit Jay Reddy's ancestral land. Unfortunately, however, before this harder to arrange match could be made and Lakshmi come of age, Jay died.

With no male heirs to the ancestral land, Jay's brothers now began to eye his property.

In an ancestral village not her own and with a daughter not genetically related to her late husband's extended family, there were no nearby male relatives to take up Parmita's case for an appropriate match for her daughter. Young Lakshmi thus became vulnerable to forces beyond her and her mother's control.

On November 19, 1978, a weeping and protesting 14 year old Lakshmi, having just learned that her father was only her step-father, was married off to an elderly relative of her step-father: the 60 year old, childless widower, Balram Reddy.

From the first, the marriage was an unhappy one. Lakshmi was forced to provide support for the family since Balram would not do so. Yet Balram was constantly suspicious of his wife's fidelity whenever she left to work in the fields. Upon her return there would often be anger, arguments, and even beatings. But there were also periods of peace and calm. Lakshmi was a hard worker and a good provider. The family never lacked for more than adequate amounts of good things to eat.

Lakshmi would bear Balram three children: first a boy Prakash in 1978, and then two girls, Anjali in 1982 and Sutara in 1985. Balram was a kind father; Lakshmi a good mother who deeply loved her three children. Lakshmi dressed her daughters in pretty clothes and spent much time lovingly fixing their hair. The children accompanied Lakshmi in the field as she planted and tended rice. Parmita, with whom they lived, was a good grandmother and loved to tell her grandchildren traditional stories.

Left to right: Anjali, a neighbor's child, and Sutara when they
were younger and living at home with their mother, Lakshmi.
The girls say their mother Lakshmi loved to dress them in pretty
clothes and fix their hair with bows and flowers.
Photo courtesy of the girls' brother Prakash.

When he was old enough, Prakash, because he was a boy, began attending the village school.

Still, the unhappiness and strife of the marriage continued. Finally there came a time when the couple separated. But separation, let alone divorce, is hard to acheive in such a society. Lakshmi and Balram were inextricably linked to each other, and the pressure to reunite was hard to resist. The initial separation was followed by a reunion; but inevitably, again, with a return to strife, another separation. During one of the separations, Prakash, who had by now gone through the seventh grade, was put to work.

During the periods of separation, Lakshmi did her best to fend on her own. It was not easy without the benefit of house and land. She now, along with her daughters, left Kuvampalle village for Sangareddi, a bigger town nearby. Perhaps she could better support herself there and also escape the disapproval of the people of Kuvampalle.

Once settled in Sangareddi, Lakshmi tried to send her daughters to school.. However, without an internalized imperative to get an education and alone without anyone to look after them while their mother worked, the young school-aged girls went out to play instead. Thus they, like Lakshmi, remained uneducated and illiterate.

Balram Reddy and Lakshmi maintained cordial relations during these periods of separation. Balram would stop in to see Lakshmi and their children. Though Lakshmi kept her youngest child Sutara with her, she would occasionally allow Anjali to go on trips with her father and also stay for periods of time with her grandmother, Parmita. Whenever Balram and Lakshmi had contact, he would beg her to come back to him; Balram would not give up on the idea that Lakshmi might again return to him. But for all practical purposes, Lakshmi with her two daughters, was now a woman alone in the world. To be a woman alone in non-urban India is to be vulnerable. How little did Lakshmi understand just how vulnerable she and her beloved daughters would soon become!

At some point during this time, Parmita died. The ancestral lands were sold to one of Lakshmi's step-father's relatives. Lakshmi's ties to Kuvampalle were now broken. Perhaps it was a good thing. The people of Kuvampalle village had little respect for her because she had refused to stay with Balram Reddy.

During one of the periods of separation from Balram, Lakshmi was befriended by a petty money lender. Yasmin came bearing gifts of beautiful clothing and offering Lakshmi not only her friendship, which a woman struggling alone surely needed, but also petty loans.

Lakshmi did not know that Yasmin was an orphanage scout, identifying vulnerable families with desirable children for an orphanage in the huge city of Hyderabad and getting paid to deliver them. Villagers in Sangareddi describe how Yasmin would go round to the nearby villages giving out loans, and when those loans couldn't be repaid, suggesting that the debtors consider putting their children into a hostel in Hyderabad to "get an education and better themselves." She had thus secured children from five other Sangareddy families in this way, say the villagers. The same villagers also say that the Hyderabad orphanage director visited Sangareddi twice to look over Lakshmi's girls.

Yasmin at some point returned to Lakshmi and demanded that she give back the clothes and repay the loans. Lakshmi was horrified. Already struggling to survive in this non-farming, more urban environment where she worked long hours for meager pay as a seamstress, Lakshmi did not have the money to repay Yasmin right then. Already knowing this, Yasmin, according to Lakshmi, now demanded that if Lakshmi couldn't repay the money, she ought to give her (Yasmin) her (Lakshmi's) daughters. Lakshmi became very angry at the suggestion, and the two became entangled in an intense argument.

By methods of one sort or another, Yasmin persuaded a reluctant Lakshmi to place her daughters in Agency for Social Improvement (ASI) in Hyderabad. There, Yasmin reasoned, the girls could get an education and better themselves; with fewer expenses and more time Lakshmi would thus be freed up to work at repaying her loans. Yasmin told Lakshmi that she could visit her children anytime she liked while they were at ASI; likewise she could also retrieve them and bring them back to Sangareddi whenever she decided she wanted to do that. To clinch the deal and reassure Lakshmi that she had made the right decision, Yasmin then took both Lakshmi and her daughters on a day trip to Hyderabad to visit Agency for Social Improvement (ASI).

There at ASI, no doubt, Lakshmi saw well-cared for children receiving nutritious food and an education. Though it was not common for people of Kuvampalle village or Sangareddy to do so, in general in India, it is not unusual for the poor to send their children to orphanages or "hostels" for an education. It is customary for such children to retain ties to their families. Indeed, many such orphanages require that children return home for holidays and will not accept a child who is without parents or a legal guardian. Lakshmi was doubtless familiar with such institutions and such customs. What did she have to lose? In terms of providing the girls an education, it couldn't have escaped Lakshmi's notice that her elder daughter, Anjali, was beginning to develop womanly attributes, and obviously, therefore, was close to the time of her first period--close to the age at which she, Lakshmi, had been married off to Balram. Whatever her thought processes, Lakshmi returned from Hyderabad persuaded.

However, Balram, who had gotten wind of Yasmin's proposal, was not persuaded. He returned to Lakshmi's rented room that evening-- the evening before the girls were to leave. Balram was adamantly against sending Anjali and Sutara to ASI. The two argued vehemently. In the end Lakshmi, against the wishes of her estranged husband, decided to do what seemed best to her. That last evening before their departure, the girls stood with their mother for a photograph.

Early the next morning Yasmin took Lakshmi and her daughters to Agency for Social Improvement. There the illiterate Lakshmi put her thumb print on some papers which she could not read, and said good-bye to her daughters, telling them that she would return to visit them, and that, eventually, they would come home again.. Little did she know that she had fallen neatly into Yasmin's trap.

It was in the summer of 1995 that Lakshmi last hugged her daughters. Anjali was 13 and Sutara was 10.

With earnings of 30 rupees (about 65 cents) a day, Lakshmi is among the one-sixth of the world's population earning a dollar a day or less. It costs about 200 rupees (about $4)--a week's earnings-- to make the round trip between Sangareddi and Hyderabad. It is easy to understand how it took Lakshmi a year to save enough money to return to ASI to visit her daughters. When she finally did make the long-awaited trip, Lakshmi was surprised to find that she was not allowed to have real contact with them. She was permitted only to see Anjali and Sutara through a one-way glass partition. Told that her girls were studying for a better life and shouldn't be reminded of home as it would disturb them, Lakshmi had no choice but to leave again without getting to touch or talk to them. Lakshmi must have worried--how would her daughters ever know that she kept her promise to visit them? If she wasn't allowed to see them, how would she be allowed to bring them home? Upon her return to Sangareddi, Lakshmi found Yasmin and begged her to bring Anjali and Sutara back home. Yasmin refused.

For the first time, Lakshmi began to understand that she had, in a real sense, lost her daughters. There has not been a day that has gone by since then, according to the people of the two villages where Lakshmi has lived, that Lakshmi has not cried for her lost daughters. With the loss of their daughters, Balram, who doubtless blamed Lakshmi for the girls' disappearance, stopped visiting Lakshmi. Although it would never be legally ended because of the expense, for all practical purposes, Balram and Lakshmi's marriage came to an end. Lakshmi, already spurned for leaving Balram, was now castigated as a woman who, villagers said, had sold her children. With a full load of grief and shame, Lakshmi's life went rapidly downhill.

Lakshmi might have spent the rest of her life alone in shame and grief had not another man entered her life. Mathada, who already had a wife, fell in love with the beautiful, if sad and broken, Lakshmi; he took her as his second wife, taking her home to his own village. Accepted among many of the rural poor, having two wives is not unheard of in some small rural villages. Lakshmi became Mathada's favored wife, the wife who stays home to cook and take care of the house while Mathada and his first wife go out to work in the fields. The first wife accepted Lakshmi well enough; the three of them were happy together.

News of Lakshmi's marriage to a lower caste man soon traveled back to her native Kuvampalle where it only served to further erode her already bad reputation.

Even after being remarried, Lakshmi continued to wail, cry, and mourn daily for her lost children. Mathada was perplexed as to why Lakshmi had been unable to see her daughters on her 1996 visit. He became convinced that Lakshmi could never be truly happy again until her daughters were found and restored to her. Mathada again found Yasmin. Together, in 1998, Mathada, Yasmin, and Lakshmi traveled to Agency for Social Improvement hoping to restore Lakshmi's daughters to her. Upon their arrival at ASI, Mathada and Lakshmi were, at the door, told that they could not come in; Yasmin alone was allowed to enter. After a time she emerged to say that Anjali and Sutara were no longer there--that they had been sent abroad........adopted by a family overseas!

Lakshmi of Kuvampalle village

This is hardly what Mathada or Lakshmi expected to hear! When a weeping, wailing Lakshmi demanded of Yasmin how this could have happened, Yasmin replied, "Give me at least 10,000 rupees and I will talk to [the orphanage director] to return the children. He has spent this amount of money on their milk and English education." Please understand that ten thousand rupees--about $225-- represented about a year's worth of earnings to Lakshmi.

Lakshmi had been told that the children's care was free. Now she was being presented with a bill of a year's worth of her earnings--a kind of an impossible ransom--to get her children back? How could it be that her children had been twice mortgaged for a debt without her knowledge or consent?.

The frantically upset Lakshmi now demanded that she see the orphanage director. Yasmin took her in. According to Lakshmi, the director's response to her emotional distress and her demands that her children be returned to her, was to place 1,000 rupees (about $22) on the table. Lakshmi refused to touch the money. Again she asked that her children be returned to her. The director again, according to Lakshmi, reiterated that he could not do so--the children were gone. Over the ocean. Far away.

What was now to be done? What could they do but go home? Lakshmi had lost her daughters. Yasmin took the 1,000 rupees and used it to pay the bus fares. When the three reached the village, she gave the remainder of the money to the grieving Lakshmi.

Lakshmi Reddy had lost her own very much loved and very much wanted daughters, Anjali and Sutara to international adoption.

		Adopting Internationally A guide to understanding international adoption in the global village. No man is an island. No man stands alone. Each man's joy is joy to me. Each man's grief is my own.

Family Stories		An Indian Adoption Story Part I: Lakshmi's Story

Home Family Stories: An Indian Adoption Story: Part I: Lakshmi's Story Part II: Anjali & Sutara's Story Photo: Reunion Voices of an Indian Birthmother and Her Community Fatima's Story and Fatima's Community Speaks Analysis: Legal Articles: Article I: Intercountry Adoption as Child Trafficking Article II: The Two Faces of Intercountry Adoption Article III: Child Laundering: How the Intercountry Adoption System Legitimizes and Incentivizes the Practices of Buying, Trafficking, Kidnapping, and Stealing Children Law Enforcement: What Really Happened in Cambodia What You Can Do What to Do About Adoption Corruption: the Summary List What to Do About Adoption Corruption: the Detailed List Fleasbiting--An Adoption Corruption Blog Links Contact Us		The names of the people and places in this story have been changed to protect their privacy This is the story of how Lakshmi Reddy, who was first of all the loving mother of her own children, Anjali and Sutara Reddy.........and only later, and involuntarily, the "birthmother" of these same daughters, fell unwittingly into the trap of an orphanage scout and lost them to international adoption. In early 1998, Anjali and Sutara were being advertised on an internet photolisting as "waiting children" in need of a "forever home." In late 1998 they were adopted by an American family. The story of Lakshmi Reddy came fully to light in November of 2004, nine years after she last saw her daughters, as the result of a birth family search initiated by her grown daughters and their adoptive family. *"The cage went in search of a bird."* Franz Kafka Lakshmi's Story After his first wife died leaving him without an heir, the landowning Jay Reddy took to himself a second wife. Though she came from a village in the neighboring district, to the people of tiny Kuvampalle village, Parmita might as well have come from the other side of the world. No one knew her family nor her story. In a place where everyone knows everything about everyone, and where everyone is connected to everyone by blood and loyalty ties, this would eventually be a problem. But Jay Reddy, for his part, was happy with his wife. Because Parmita had arrived with two already existing children, the toddler Manjara and the four-month-old Lakshmi, Jay was at last a father. Jay and Parmita raised the young girls to believe that they were Jay's offspring. Jay must have hoped that together he and Parmita would have more children, perhaps even the male heir he desired, but this was not to be. Manjara and Lakshmi remained Jay's only children. The literacy rate for women in Medak district even today in 2005 is below fifty percent. But in those days, in all of Kuvampalle village, there was according to the Indian census published in 1961, only one literate woman. It is not surprising, therefore, that Manjara and Lakshmi were not sent to school and never became literate. As has been the case for thousands of years in thousands of rural villages in India, marriage came, and indeed still comes, early to the girls of Kuvampalle village. Most are married at age 14, a year after their first periods. When the Reddy's eldest daughter Manjara came of age, a suitable match was found for her in a nearby village. Manjara, according to custom, moved to her husband's village and into her parents-in-law's house, to become a part of their family. Manjara would subsequently bear her husband three children before dying an early death. Now only Lakshmi remained. Because Jay had no male heirs, it was important that Lakshmi be matched to a man who would, contrary to custom but according to need, come and stay in Kuvampalle village to help farm, to become a part of Jay's family, and to inherit Jay Reddy's ancestral land. Unfortunately, however, before this harder to arrange match could be made and Lakshmi come of age, Jay died. With no male heirs to the ancestral land, Jay's brothers now began to eye his property. In an ancestral village not her own and with a daughter not genetically related to her late husband's extended family, there were no nearby male relatives to take up Parmita's case for an appropriate match for her daughter. Young Lakshmi thus became vulnerable to forces beyond her and her mother's control. On November 19, 1978, a weeping and protesting 14 year old Lakshmi, having just learned that her father was only her step-father, was married off to an elderly relative of her step-father: the 60 year old, childless widower, Balram Reddy. From the first, the marriage was an unhappy one. Lakshmi was forced to provide support for the family since Balram would not do so. Yet Balram was constantly suspicious of his wife's fidelity whenever she left to work in the fields. Upon her return there would often be anger, arguments, and even beatings. But there were also periods of peace and calm. Lakshmi was a hard worker and a good provider. The family never lacked for more than adequate amounts of good things to eat. Lakshmi would bear Balram three children: first a boy Prakash in 1978, and then two girls, Anjali in 1982 and Sutara in 1985. Balram was a kind father; Lakshmi a good mother who deeply loved her three children. Lakshmi dressed her daughters in pretty clothes and spent much time lovingly fixing their hair. The children accompanied Lakshmi in the field as she planted and tended rice. Parmita, with whom they lived, was a good grandmother and loved to tell her grandchildren traditional stories. Left to right: Anjali, a neighbor's child, and Sutara when they were younger and living at home with their mother, Lakshmi. The girls say their mother Lakshmi loved to dress them in pretty clothes and fix their hair with bows and flowers. Photo courtesy of the girls' brother Prakash. When he was old enough, Prakash, because he was a boy, began attending the village school. Still, the unhappiness and strife of the marriage continued. Finally there came a time when the couple separated. But separation, let alone divorce, is hard to acheive in such a society. Lakshmi and Balram were inextricably linked to each other, and the pressure to reunite was hard to resist. The initial separation was followed by a reunion; but inevitably, again, with a return to strife, another separation. During one of the separations, Prakash, who had by now gone through the seventh grade, was put to work. During the periods of separation, Lakshmi did her best to fend on her own. It was not easy without the benefit of house and land. She now, along with her daughters, left Kuvampalle village for Sangareddi, a bigger town nearby. Perhaps she could better support herself there and also escape the disapproval of the people of Kuvampalle. Once settled in Sangareddi, Lakshmi tried to send her daughters to school.. However, without an internalized imperative to get an education and alone without anyone to look after them while their mother worked, the young school-aged girls went out to play instead. Thus they, like Lakshmi, remained uneducated and illiterate. Balram Reddy and Lakshmi maintained cordial relations during these periods of separation. Balram would stop in to see Lakshmi and their children. Though Lakshmi kept her youngest child Sutara with her, she would occasionally allow Anjali to go on trips with her father and also stay for periods of time with her grandmother, Parmita. Whenever Balram and Lakshmi had contact, he would beg her to come back to him; Balram would not give up on the idea that Lakshmi might again return to him. But for all practical purposes, Lakshmi with her two daughters, was now a woman alone in the world. To be a woman alone in non-urban India is to be vulnerable. How little did Lakshmi understand just how vulnerable she and her beloved daughters would soon become! At some point during this time, Parmita died. The ancestral lands were sold to one of Lakshmi's step-father's relatives. Lakshmi's ties to Kuvampalle were now broken. Perhaps it was a good thing. The people of Kuvampalle village had little respect for her because she had refused to stay with Balram Reddy. During one of the periods of separation from Balram, Lakshmi was befriended by a petty money lender. Yasmin came bearing gifts of beautiful clothing and offering Lakshmi not only her friendship, which a woman struggling alone surely needed, but also petty loans. Lakshmi did not know that Yasmin was an orphanage scout, identifying vulnerable families with desirable children for an orphanage in the huge city of Hyderabad and getting paid to deliver them. Villagers in Sangareddi describe how Yasmin would go round to the nearby villages giving out loans, and when those loans couldn't be repaid, suggesting that the debtors consider putting their children into a hostel in Hyderabad to "get an education and better themselves." She had thus secured children from five other Sangareddy families in this way, say the villagers. The same villagers also say that the Hyderabad orphanage director visited Sangareddi twice to look over Lakshmi's girls. Yasmin at some point returned to Lakshmi and demanded that she give back the clothes and repay the loans. Lakshmi was horrified. Already struggling to survive in this non-farming, more urban environment where she worked long hours for meager pay as a seamstress, Lakshmi did not have the money to repay Yasmin right then. Already knowing this, Yasmin, according to Lakshmi, now demanded that if Lakshmi couldn't repay the money, she ought to give her (Yasmin) her (Lakshmi's) daughters. Lakshmi became very angry at the suggestion, and the two became entangled in an intense argument. By methods of one sort or another, Yasmin persuaded a reluctant Lakshmi to place her daughters in Agency for Social Improvement (ASI) in Hyderabad. There, Yasmin reasoned, the girls could get an education and better themselves; with fewer expenses and more time Lakshmi would thus be freed up to work at repaying her loans. Yasmin told Lakshmi that she could visit her children anytime she liked while they were at ASI; likewise she could also retrieve them and bring them back to Sangareddi whenever she decided she wanted to do that. To clinch the deal and reassure Lakshmi that she had made the right decision, Yasmin then took both Lakshmi and her daughters on a day trip to Hyderabad to visit Agency for Social Improvement (ASI). There at ASI, no doubt, Lakshmi saw well-cared for children receiving nutritious food and an education. Though it was not common for people of Kuvampalle village or Sangareddy to do so, in general in India, it is not unusual for the poor to send their children to orphanages or "hostels" for an education. It is customary for such children to retain ties to their families. Indeed, many such orphanages require that children return home for holidays and will not accept a child who is without parents or a legal guardian. Lakshmi was doubtless familiar with such institutions and such customs. What did she have to lose? In terms of providing the girls an education, it couldn't have escaped Lakshmi's notice that her elder daughter, Anjali, was beginning to develop womanly attributes, and obviously, therefore, was close to the time of her first period--close to the age at which she, Lakshmi, had been married off to Balram. Whatever her thought processes, Lakshmi returned from Hyderabad persuaded. However, Balram, who had gotten wind of Yasmin's proposal, was not persuaded. He returned to Lakshmi's rented room that evening-- the evening before the girls were to leave. Balram was adamantly against sending Anjali and Sutara to ASI. The two argued vehemently. In the end Lakshmi, against the wishes of her estranged husband, decided to do what seemed best to her. That last evening before their departure, the girls stood with their mother for a photograph. Early the next morning Yasmin took Lakshmi and her daughters to Agency for Social Improvement. There the illiterate Lakshmi put her thumb print on some papers which she could not read, and said good-bye to her daughters, telling them that she would return to visit them, and that, eventually, they would come home again.. Little did she know that she had fallen neatly into Yasmin's trap. It was in the summer of 1995 that Lakshmi last hugged her daughters. Anjali was 13 and Sutara was 10. With earnings of 30 rupees (about 65 cents) a day, Lakshmi is among the one-sixth of the world's population earning a dollar a day or less. It costs about 200 rupees (about $4)--a week's earnings-- to make the round trip between Sangareddi and Hyderabad. It is easy to understand how it took Lakshmi a year to save enough money to return to ASI to visit her daughters. When she finally did make the long-awaited trip, Lakshmi was surprised to find that she was not allowed to have real contact with them. She was permitted only to see Anjali and Sutara through a one-way glass partition. Told that her girls were studying for a better life and shouldn't be reminded of home as it would disturb them, Lakshmi had no choice but to leave again without getting to touch or talk to them. Lakshmi must have worried--how would her daughters ever know that she kept her promise to visit them? If she wasn't allowed to see them, how would she be allowed to bring them home? Upon her return to Sangareddi, Lakshmi found Yasmin and begged her to bring Anjali and Sutara back home. Yasmin refused. For the first time, Lakshmi began to understand that she had, in a real sense, lost her daughters. There has not been a day that has gone by since then, according to the people of the two villages where Lakshmi has lived, that Lakshmi has not cried for her lost daughters. With the loss of their daughters, Balram, who doubtless blamed Lakshmi for the girls' disappearance, stopped visiting Lakshmi. Although it would never be legally ended because of the expense, for all practical purposes, Balram and Lakshmi's marriage came to an end. Lakshmi, already spurned for leaving Balram, was now castigated as a woman who, villagers said, had sold her children. With a full load of grief and shame, Lakshmi's life went rapidly downhill. Lakshmi might have spent the rest of her life alone in shame and grief had not another man entered her life. Mathada, who already had a wife, fell in love with the beautiful, if sad and broken, Lakshmi; he took her as his second wife, taking her home to his own village. Accepted among many of the rural poor, having two wives is not unheard of in some small rural villages. Lakshmi became Mathada's favored wife, the wife who stays home to cook and take care of the house while Mathada and his first wife go out to work in the fields. The first wife accepted Lakshmi well enough; the three of them were happy together. News of Lakshmi's marriage to a lower caste man soon traveled back to her native Kuvampalle where it only served to further erode her already bad reputation. Even after being remarried, Lakshmi continued to wail, cry, and mourn daily for her lost children. Mathada was perplexed as to why Lakshmi had been unable to see her daughters on her 1996 visit. He became convinced that Lakshmi could never be truly happy again until her daughters were found and restored to her. Mathada again found Yasmin. Together, in 1998, Mathada, Yasmin, and Lakshmi traveled to Agency for Social Improvement hoping to restore Lakshmi's daughters to her. Upon their arrival at ASI, Mathada and Lakshmi were, at the door, told that they could not come in; Yasmin alone was allowed to enter. After a time she emerged to say that Anjali and Sutara were no longer there--that they had been sent abroad........adopted by a family overseas! Lakshmi of Kuvampalle village This is hardly what Mathada or Lakshmi expected to hear! When a weeping, wailing Lakshmi demanded of Yasmin how this could have happened, Yasmin replied, "Give me at least 10,000 rupees and I will talk to [the orphanage director] to return the children. He has spent this amount of money on their milk and English education." Please understand that ten thousand rupees--about $225-- represented about a year's worth of earnings to Lakshmi. Lakshmi had been told that the children's care was free. Now she was being presented with a bill of a year's worth of her earnings--a kind of an impossible ransom--to get her children back? How could it be that her children had been twice mortgaged for a debt without her knowledge or consent?. The frantically upset Lakshmi now demanded that she see the orphanage director. Yasmin took her in. According to Lakshmi, the director's response to her emotional distress and her demands that her children be returned to her, was to place 1,000 rupees (about $22) on the table. Lakshmi refused to touch the money. Again she asked that her children be returned to her. The director again, according to Lakshmi, reiterated that he could not do so--the children were gone. Over the ocean. Far away. What was now to be done? What could they do but go home? Lakshmi had lost her daughters. Yasmin took the 1,000 rupees and used it to pay the bus fares. When the three reached the village, she gave the remainder of the money to the grieving Lakshmi. Lakshmi Reddy had lost her own very much loved and very much wanted daughters, Anjali and Sutara to international adoption.

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