How a homeless couple battled all odds to foster a girl child and give her wings

Iritty (Kannur):After eight years and a half, Devika K S (18) is leaving another house. This time, to become a nurse. Though her ambition is to become a chartered accountant, she is stepping out brimming with confidence. "She has no fear that something will happen to her. That is my fear," says Babu Raj, a painter by profession and Devika's foster father since 2015.

At the age of 10, Devika was rescued by the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) from a house in Kasaragod, where she was working as a domestic help. By then, she had to leave six houses, including two houses in Kasaragod where she was enslaved for two years and then chucked out because she was unmanageable; her own house at Chinnasalem after her mother died and father abandoned her, and her relative's house because she was "mentally not mature".

Foster care changed not just her life but the lives of Babu Raj (57) and Radha Mani K S (56), her foster parents, at Velimanam, a village in Kannur's Aralam grama panchayat.

It was not all hunky-dory. "We had to struggle a lot, not just with outsiders but with ourselves too to keep her," says Radha Mani. "Looking back, we think we did good," she says.

Devika, now an adult, says she wants to adopt her foster parents. "I only wish she learns some humility," shoots back Radha. And the three crack up.

A shed called home
"Ask them to stop the orchestra," Radha tells Devika. The girl picks a stick and hits the leg of a bed to silence the congregation of frogs croaking under the bed. "This house does not have a foundation. So the frogs just hop in," says Babu Raj.

Their house is a two-room windowless shed, fortified by half walls and tarpaulin sheets. One of the rooms is a small kitchen, and the second room has two beds, a study table, a cupboard, a sewing machine, and a stool for the mixer, all placed next to one another.

"They did not have a house. That was the only negative point against the couple in our social report when we considered them for fostering Devika," said a former CWC official, who rescued the girl.

But the childless couple did not travel nearly 150km from Vilimanam to Kasaragod to become foster parents. Sometime in November 2014, Babu Raj and Radha Mani saw a Malayala Manorama news clip saying the CWC was giving up a three-year-old girl found abandoned for adoption and sought to know if there were any objections. "The news clip was at least three or four days old. We were afraid we lost the girl because of the delay," says Radha. She still has the news clip.

They did not know they had to register online with the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), a statutory body of the Ministry of Women & Child Development.

The Kasaragod Child Welfare Committee proposed to take Devi, rescued from a house, under foster care provided they are healthy and socially and financially fit. At that time, the couple was staying with Radha Mani's youngest sister at Velimanam.

For physical fitness tests, the couple had to undergo a series of blood tests, including for HIV and tuberculosis. "It was humiliating," says Babu Raj. The staff at the Iritty Taluk hospital wanted to know why they were taking the HIV test, who recommended it and if they were in the "profession", he recalls.

The tests came negative. The social investigation report was positive, except that they did not have a house.

The CWC also did an ossification test and found Devika was 10 years old.

Two months later, she came into their lives and house. "I remember the date. It was January 18, 2015," says Radha Mani. "A Sunday," adds Devika.

Devika's Punishing Journey
When she was rescued, her name was Devi, a name given by one of her employers. "My mother used to call me Maruthamma," says Devika, displaying once again her photographic memory. Maruthamma means honey.

After her mother died, her father remarried and abandoned her.

A distant relative brought her home but gave up on her because she was "not mentally mature". She was then seven years old.

A gypsy woman brought her to Kasaragod and put her up in a house as domestic help. The family returned her within weeks.

The relative gave her to another house. "I stayed there for two rainy seasons and one Onam," Devika says. "I remember Onam because they gave me new clothes on Onam," she says.

The woman, a distant relative, then put her up in another house, from where she was rescued on the third day after a neighbour tipped off the CWC. Police had registered a case against the woman and the family.

Angry little girl
The couple had difficulty adjusting to the new member in the house. Radha's youngest sister had even more trouble. "She could not digest the fact that we brought a stranger to her house," said Babu Raj.

So the couple made a two-room shed on Radha's ancestral property and moved in there. "We thought Devika needs privacy and freedom," said Radha.

But Devika was a difficult child. "When I returned home for lunch after grazing the goats, she would have eaten her lunch. She would make balls with the rest of the rice and throw them out," says Radha. "I would be really mad and hungry. But Devika would sit and stare at me without expression," he says.

Babu Raj says they had thought of sending the girl back. "But we have yearned for a child for long to give up easily," says the mother.

In 2005, the year Devika was presumably born, a woman came to their house to give up her five-year-old daughter. The couple was then in Shivamogga (Shimoga), farming ginger on leased land. "I wanted to adopt the girl. She was dark and beautiful," says Radha. "The girl triggered the maternal instinct in me. I still remember her name. Pavithra."

Baburaj suspected the girl was a stolen baby and said no.

Later, the couple walked more than 10km to a remote village after someone told them that a Malayali father was giving up his daughter. When they reached there, the father told them they were fooled. "Our sandals wore out and we walked barefoot to reach home that day," he says.

Birth certificate
In May 2015, Radha and Babu Raj applied for the girl's birth certificate at Aralam grama panchayat. They decided to admit her to St. Sebastian's Higher Secondary School at Velimanam, a 10-minute walk from home. While discussing the girl's name in the panchayat office, Keezhpalli ward member Devika Krishnan walked into the office. "The official said let's name the girl Devika. And he changed the name from Devi to Devika," says Radha.

But the panchayat did not issue the birth certificate. Three days before the school reopened on June 1, Radha went to the panchayat to get the certificate. The officials sent her back without giving a reason.

On May 30, a Saturday, she went to the panchayat again. "It was around 2 pm. I did not have my lunch and was hungry. But they kept me waiting," she says.

That's when she lost her cool. "I told them I was not coming to the panchayat office every day to see their beauty," she says.

The panchayat officials directed her to the panchayat president, V T Thomas, a retired high school headmaster and Radha's teacher, too. "He told me I was committing a blunder by keeping the girl. I replied so be it," she says.

The panchayat then issued the birth certificate.

Devika's first teachers
Around nine Capuchin brothers used to stay in a rented house in the couple's neighbourhood. The house was like a labour bank and residents could ask to seek their help to do any work.

Once Babu Raj sought the help of one brother for masonry and brother Lijo turned up. "When he saw Devika, he volunteered to teach her," said Babu Raj. Every day, he would come home and teach her Malayalam, English, and mathematics.

When she joined the school in Class V, Radha Mani told her class teacher Sini that Devika would need extra attention. "The teacher formed a group of students to teach Devika," she says.

By the time she reached Class 6, Devika was fluent in Malayalam and good at mathematics. After every academic year, she calls Lijo, now a priest, and Sini 'teacher' to inform them of her progress.

In Class X, she scored 95%. For higher secondary, she chose commerce to become a chartered accountant. She passed class XII with 82%.

When she was in Class X, Radha, and Babu Raj were infected with coronavirus. "Though she is a kid, she took care of us," says Radha.

In March this year, in the middle of her Class XII final exams, Radha had to donate her kidney to her youngest sister, who suffered renal failure. "Devika was taking care of me and yet she scored good marks," says the foster mother. (In May, three months after the transplant, Radha's sister succumbed to pneumonia.)

Nurse or CA?
Devika says she is good at accountancy and wants to become a chartered accountant. But Radha and Babu Raj have not heard much of the profession.

"We want her to be financially independent. We don't want her to be dependent on anybody," says Radha.

The couple thinks becoming a nurse is the easiest way to make her independent. They have zeroed in on a nursing college in Mangaluru and are raising around Rs 5 lakh for the course.

The couple is also building a 600 sq ft house adjacent to their shed. It has two bedrooms with bathrooms attached. "She's grown and will need her own room when she returns from college," says the foster father.