Dependences

(October 9th, 2011)

On a feeling, on a place, on a flavor, on a smell. We want to create and recreate them; recall them, if they are lost in memory, grab them, if we’ve never had them.

I watch them every evening during dalbat: Kalpana, her husband, Suri, Pari and Khiti – and Ama. Eating together. To me, it’s magic. The way they share the food and the bottle of water, in silence for a while, till the hunger is a bit appeased. Then the chatting and the laughing … which last long after the plates had been emptied.

I hardly understand a word, but it’s the feeling of a family I am dependent on. I know exactly where this dependence comes from, I can objectively cut through it … but in moments like this, I give in. I miss the age when I was seven or eight, my brother was about thirteen, and our parents were still alive. I try as hard as I can to recall those memories, we must have had this, too, at some moment in our lives.

Just across the house I live in, it’s the orphanage. I asked to work there, in the first place, but I was offered teaching English at the school. As long as I got to be among children, I figured it should be fine. I haven’t made it yet. To the orphanage.  But as I study these days this guide to nonprofit careers, and write down thoughts and considerations, one idea has made it into shape: building an orphanage, back in my own country. What I wish for every child in this world is they didn’t have to grow up without the warmth and confidence only a family can give. I would keep them in the orphanage, only until we’d manage to find them an adoptive family; they would be caressed, listened, encouraged to express their feelings and verbalize their thoughts. They would sing and draw and dance their days though, until they would have someone to call mom and dad.