Even after 11 years of mar­riage and trying to conceive, Shakuntala Devi Kandel (36) and Basu Dev Kandel (44) from Dang district were childless. They visited Om Hospital in Kath­mandu and Lucknow Hospital in India for treatment but still couldn’t conceive. “I cried myself to sleep every night. The people in our com­munity gossiped about us as we were a childless couple, which was horrible. I was ready to die because I felt incomplete without a child,” says Shakuntala. Basu felt helpless too and was worried who would take care of them when the couple was old. It was then that they decid­ed to adopt a child.

 

“First, we considered Om Hospital but if we adopted from there, the mother would know who took her child and might later come looking for the child. So we went to Bal Mandir [Nepal Children’s Organiza­tion]. We had to wait for three years before we got the call,” reveals Basu. In those three years, he traveled from Dang to Kathmandu six times to ask if a child was available for adoption in Bal Mandir.

 

There, they met Subika for the first time on 13 Sept, 2015, when she was just 11 months. “As our daughter has tanned skin, I think she relates to me more as my skin tone matches hers. Her mother is fair-skinned,” jokes Basu. They are yet to tell their daughter she is adopted. But, adds Shakuntala, “we are not worried even if she comes to know from someone. Much like we accept her, we know our daughter will accept us too.”

 

"Most parents who adopt children from Bal Mandir cannot accept the truth that their children are adopted"

Bal Krishna Dangol, Director of Bal mandir

 

Not every story ends as happily, and adopting a child in Nepal is still tricky. The current adoption law only allows infertile couples who have been married for at least 10 years to adopt. “Before September 2018, couples who had been mar­ried for four years and were infertile could adopt. But advancement in technology forced a change. There are surrogates or test-tube babies now,” says Bal Krishna Dangol, director at Bal Mandir.

 

So, what if a couple adopts think­ing they cannot conceive but have their own children after using new technology, he asks? “Moreover, there are many parents wanting to adopt but only a small number of children available.”

 

Single Nepali infertile women can adopt but single men are not allowed to under any condition

 

Singular problem

Single Nepali infertile women can adopt but single men are not allowed to under any condition. When asked why, Dangol replies, “Women can’t bear children after a certain age. But men don’t face that kind of age barrier. There are single men who come looking to adopt but we have to turn them away.” But sin­gle women who are trying to adopt told APEX that due to changing adoption laws and unclear policies, they face great difficulty in different stages of adoption.

 

One such case is of a development officer from Kathmandu who fos­tered four brothers since their child­hood. “In 1999, there was a landslide in Dhading, which orphaned 12 kids. So with the intention of adopting one of them, I went to Bal Mandir,” she says.

 

 

“Then, I met these four children. The youngest was 14 months and the eldest was 9 years old then. If I had adopted just one child, there was no telling where the other three brothers would end up and I did not want to separate them”. So she decided to adopt all of them by going against the Bal Mandir policy at the time which allowed for the adop­tion of only two children, and of different sexes. “Also, one could not choose whom to adopt. I’d already decided I wanted to adopt them particularly because they belonged to my ethnic group.”

 

The foster mother was 37 at the time and had to prove she was infer­tile, which she was not. Additionally, she was told that her husband’s agreement was mandatory but then she was unmarried. “I still am. It’s a choice I have made. It took months of convincing to finally let me bring the boys home. I was not allowed to adopt them, only to be their foster parent. I wanted to give the boys a good environment so I was okay with it.”

 

When she went to finish paper­work, she was asked who she had come with. “My father of 78 had accompanied me. So I was not allowed to sign the paper.” When asked why, she replies, “Because I am a woman. As a male figure was present, my father was asked to sign even though he had no means of a regular income. I was tired by that time, so I allowed it.” Curi­ously, while her father became the children’s foster parent she became their sister.

 

Even though she is providing for them, she cannot claim anything legally such as medical insurance that her job would provide her chil­dren. The boys have already got­ten citizenship under their parents’ name as she had preserved their parents’ citizenship certificates.

 

Chosen by heart

She says even the people who are infertile should be allowed to adopt. “In our society once you get married, you are expected to procreate. So there is the belief that you adopt only when you cannot procreate. And adoption is usually done secretly”. She says allowing people to adopt even if they are fer­tile would reduce the stigma. “Those who adopt should be proud of what they did.”

 

Another couple that has fostered a child for the past seven years is Bhushan Tuladhar and Shriju Prad­han. They are now trying to adopt the child legally. It is through their relatives that they adopted Siddharth, who is 10 now. He is related to their family but both his parents passed away when he was little. “We saw a child in need and decided to help. Once he came and lived with us, we felt so close that we have now thought about going ahead with adopting him legally. Hopefully we won’t face many prob­lems,” says Pradhan.

 

The couple has two daughters. They consulted their elder daugh­ter before bringing Siddharth in the house and she was excited. Their younger daughter was only a year old then. “The law tells us to share property with our three children, which is as it should be. All my children should get a share,” she says. “We cannot go around telling everyone that he is our foster child. When we meet someone and introduce him as our child, sometimes people point that he does not look like either of us, right in front of him which can be hurtful. Even when one says such things to a biological child, it can cause psy­chological harm. I wish people were more thoughtful!”

 

Dangol says that most parents who adopt children from Bal Mandir cannot accept the truth that their children are adopted. So they shy away from the topic. But Dangol says this is not something to be hidden because these children are actually “chosen by their heart”.