Coming home to the country of their origin

Baptism is a big deal in the Faroe Islands, a group of tiny islands floating between Norway, Iceland and Denmark. Proud Protestant parents spend several thousand Danish kroner on celebrations to mark the occasion in a young boy’s life. But 13-year-old, soon-to-be baptised Sjurdur Nishant Poulsen had a unique request to mark his coming of age: a trip to Mumbai to acquaint himself with his roots.

The Poulsens, after six months of planning, boarded a flight and landed last week in the city where their adopted two children, Sjurdur and Malan Maitri, 11 were born. 

Sjurdur, like any Indian teenager, is dark-skinned and loves football. But that is where the similarity ends. The youngster speaks only Faroese, and has lived his entire life, except for the one year spent at a children’s home in Mumbai, in Strendur, a village in the Faroe Islands boasting a population of 1,000, 98% of them light-skinned. He is the only dark-skinned boy in his class of 18 students. Younger sister Malan has three classmates from different nationalities, two from Thailand and one from Mauritius.

Understandably, Mumbai has been a revelation for the duo. “The tables are turned. Everyone looks like me here,” says Sjurdur. “It feels like home. I get positive vibes from Mumbai,” adds Malan.

Gorgeous dark skin
Marion Poulsen, 48, Sjurdur’s mother and a school teacher, is the only one in the family who speaks English. She translates for Sjurdur and Malan. Amazed as the brother-sister duo is by the skin colour of the majority of the population, even more amazed are the people who meet the family in Mumbai, their driver, the staff at the hotel where they are staying, and even people on the streets, as they watch an Indian boy talking fluently in a foreign tongue with pale-skinned foreigners whom he refers to as parents.

In Mumbai, the Poulsens have been busy doing typical ‘touristy’ things like visiting the Gateway of India, Marine Drive, and street-side shopping. But their list of must-see places also included an unusual destination — Bal Vikas Sanstha, a small orphanage tucked away in a bylane in Goregaon. 

Sjurdur watched Slumdog Millionaire, surfed the internet for information on Mumbai, and even checked out the location of the Sanstha on Google Maps. Says Marion, “I tried to prepare the kids by telling them that Mumbai would be very noisy and crowded when compared to the Faroe Islands, which has a total population of just 50,000.”

“The visit has given us a lot to think about. For starters, we will talk a lot more about Indian culture and history — Sjurdur loved Mani Bhavan and was fascinated by Gandhi,” says their father Paul Arne Poulsen, 47, a seaman by profession.

Paul Arne says the kids adapted to life in Faroe Islands with the ease that only young children possess. “That is why we wanted very young children — both kids were adopted at the age of one,” he explains. “It helped that our village is small and everyone knows everyone else. The children have known their classmates all their lives. But sometimes, at summer camps, they are asked questions about their background,” says Marion, adding that she has heard of sporadic incidents in their capital, Torshavn.

“Being a teacher, I know kids can be cruel sometimes. When Malan was younger, I once advised her that if she is called ‘chocolate’ she should tell them, ‘so what if I’m ‘chocolate,’ you’re plain vanilla’,” laughs Marion.

Hannah Vidya Olsen, 14, is one of the coolest kids in her school, thanks to the fact that her ‘gorgeous dark skin’ stands out in any crowd. Anna Maria Olsen, a 43-year-old school teacher who adopted Hannah and Meriam Harishi, 7, through DanAdopt, a Danish adoption agency, says, “We come from a country that rarely sees the sun. Tans are in, and teenagers pay a lot of money for them. We tell Hannah that she has a huge advantage as she has a natural tan.”

“I’ve heard of racial discrimination in various countries and used to worry about it. But Faroe Islands is a small peace-loving nation, with zero crime rate, and almost equal distribution of assets among the population, 90% of which largely depends on the fishing industry,” says Egil Olsen, 47, Hannah and Meriam’s adoptive father.

The entire extended Olsen family of ten planned a trip to Mumbai a year in advance. Meriam, although younger, is far more vocal than her introvert sister and more keen to see Mumbai. “When Meriam was four, she asked me why she looked different from others and who her real mother was. Even when we landed in Mumbai, she kept asking me things like why are those people living on the streets, why is it so crowded, and so on,” recalls Anna Maria.

The Olsens also have their biological children, Elizabeth, 10 and Gudrid, 5, and now are “one big, happy, colourful family,” as Anna Maria puts it. “When I had my biological children, I did worry about how they would all adapt. But the four are very close now and always up to mischief,” says the mother, smiling.

The ‘root’ cause
“For the adopted children it is very important to see where they are from. We always encourage adoptive parents to let their children explore their roots,” says Jayssita Panigrahi, 58, founder and managing trustee of Bal Vikas Sanstha, Goregaon.

Marion Poulsen’s mother was Faroese and father, Scottish. She never had the opportunity to meet her father. “I didn’t want my children to grow up without knowing their real roots. That’s why I wanted them to visit Mumbai,” she says, adding that they had retained the children’s Indian names to ensure they were aware of their Indian roots “right from the time they learnt to talk.”

A year ago, at a group meeting for adopted children in the Faroe Islands, which now has 200 children adopted from across the world, Anna Maria heard a young boy adopted from Columbia speak with passion about his first visit to his country. That’s when she decided that it was time her adopted children saw their own country.

In fact, most of the parents take pains to learn more about Indian culture. “We would never hide the truth from them. Firstly, it is obvious due to the difference in our appearance. Secondly, it would just confuse them,” says Anna Maria.

“As the child grows older, he/she tends to accept the new identity and the new parents, depending on how well the parents communicate with the child,” says Dr Hozefa Bhinderwala, consultant psychiatrist, Saifee Hospital. “The disparity,” he adds, “is more in the minds of strangers, who look only at the difference in the appearance of the child, and cannot see the child’s mind.”

Natasha Alofti, 17, celebrates two birthdays every year. One is the day she was born, and the other is what she calls her ‘home-coming day’, the day the Aloftis, Natasha’s adoptive parents, officially took her — then a seven-month-old baby from Mumbai — to their home in the Faroe Islands.

Natasha speaks Faroese, Swedish, and Danish more fluently than English. “I’m trying to learn Hindi now but it’s difficult,” she adds. In August 2008, when her father, a rig manager with a multinational company, was transferred to Mumbai, the family shifted residence to Powai. “The move has been tough, but it gave her the chance to visit her roots,” says Leila Alofti, Natasha’s mother, a physiotherapist.

“It was tough when I started school in the Faroe Islands. The most common question that other kids asked me was if my parents had bought me for money in India. Once I got so angry I replied that yes, they keep children on shelves in stores for sale in India,” says Natasha.

“Life in Mumbai is very different now. The cultural difference is huge. People here stare a lot. I don’t like spicy Indian food and the streets are dirty, unlike back home,” says Natasha. Home for Natasha is Faroe Islands. “But Mumbai’s not bad either — it feels almost like home,” says the teen.

According to Dr Kersi Chavda, consultant psychiatrist, Hinduja Hospital, there are divergent opinions on the subject of taking adopted children back to their roots.  “While one group thinks that it is very good for an adopted child to get acquainted with his/her roots, others actually believe they shouldn’t. The reason: sometimes the difference between where they are at present and where they have been is so stark that they are unable to handle it,” says Chavda.

“However, by and large, if they have flown all the way to Mumbai with their adopted parents, it can be assumed that they share a great relationship with their parents and that they are mature enough to deal with the issue,” he adds.

Travelling half-way across the world to explore your roots is an expensive proposition, but that does not stop several parents with adopted children from doing it, say psychiatrists.

But having seen Mumbai, would the children like to stay back? “No. My home is in the Faroe Islands,” says Sjurdur, as his sister nods in agreement.