Madhu's Story - Finding My History
Part 2: Finding My History After a while I learned how to speak English. My Mum thought that because I didn't really understand everything that had happened to me, but I had a lot of memories, we should write a story book so that my life would start making some sense to me. Also so that my family would understand about my experiences and so that my baby brother Sadan would know what had happened to us in India.
So we used to sit down at the computer and I would try explaining to Mum some of my memories, and she would write them down for me. Lots of times she didn't really understand because I only had a bit of English and I couldn't think of the right words to tell her. Every few days we wrote the story bit by bit, but sometimes I would get sad when we would write about a sad part. Sometimes I didn't want to write the book, so Mum would ask me to do just a little bit now and then. When we had written a page I would draw a picture on it about that part of my story. I liked doing the pictures more than writing the story, because I didn't have to bother about English and the drawing part was fun.
When we finished the book, people in my family wanted to see it. Mum asked me if they could, to see how I felt about other people reading it and knowing about me. I would tell her if I felt comfortable about that.
I wanted to take my book to school and show it to my teacher because I felt proud about my book and I wanted my teacher to know more about me. After she read it she asked me if she could read it to my class. I said yes. The kids were good about it and nobody teased me about anything. They asked me a lot of questions about my experiences.
My book helped me because I could now get through thinking about my past without feeling sad each time I thought about things. Since we did it I am able to start talking about my birth family without crying.
Sometimes I get nervous talking to people about what has happened to me, about being a child labourer in India and being abandoned, and about everything else that had happened there. My friends want to know about my life, but sometimes I don't really know how to tell them. I let them read my book and ask me questions about my story, and I try explaining so that they understand me better. So I still find my book useful and it means I don't have to think of the right words to tell them.
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3 © 2001 Madhu - Reprinted with permission - All rights reserved
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