Child rights activist Nina Nayak is writing Asunta Kamal Singh’s biography titled The Lotus That Wouldn’t Wilt.Kamal tells CE that as an orphan she beat the odds to find her independence and complete her education.
CHENNAI: Out of the 300 residents at a convent with orphans, Asunta Kamal Singh was the first one to graduate and get a job. Now at 50, her life story is out in a book The Lotus that Wouldn’t Wilt co-authored by child rights activist Nina Nayak. Nina, former chairperson of Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights and member of sub-committee on children in National Planning Commission of India, is also one of the key persons behind the implementation of the landmark Juvenile Justice Act.
Kamal, as she is known to her close friends, tells City Express that her journey has not been easy but she has found her ‘guardians’, especially in Nina. Their friendship dates back to the mid-80s when Nina, a social worker from Kolkata, came to Kamal’s convent to supervise a Swedish sponsorship programme. Kamal was a teenager then. She says after Nina’s NGO started managing the sponsors’ funds, Kamal and her friends were not deprived of money and gifts.
Kamal says orphans are not encouraged to question. “Growing up as an orphan, you are expected to always remain in the shadows and serve endlessly to those who demand a lot from you, but I was a rebel. I fought to survive and, through the book, I have tried to bring out what orphans go through,” says Kamal. Even for Nina, who has spent 30 years in the field of rescuing of orphans, Kamal’s story was a revelation.
Kamal was brought to the convent in Uttar Pradesh when she was three days old. Chapter one of the book is narrated by Father Shenoy, the priest who first accepted and baptised Kamal. An excerpt from Father Shenoy’s narrative reads, “We would mother the baby, if its mother couldn’t. So it was, for this little one who arrived on the rainy evening in June. I picked at my food and turned in early. I would normally listen to the late night news on the radio, but I was in no mood to do anything. The next morning I walked across to the convent to see the baby. This story was different, but the sum and substance the same — an unwanted girl child.”
Nina and her co-author Neeraja Phatak, author of The Untold Story of Seeta, were quite surprised when Kamal readily agreed to share
her personal story with them. Kamal says that she decided to share her experience to help other orphans. “Orphans are vulnerable and they need most guidance, which I did not get easily,” she says. “The book is my guide to orphans.”
Problem with invisibility
As excited as she is about the book, which is yet to be published, Kamal says the tag of being an orphan haunts her even today when she is a mother of a teenage son and happily married. “Nothing changes,” she says. “Few weeks back, when I went to update my Aadhar card, I left a blank space to where my parents’ names had to be entered. I have always done that... But the staff said the card cannot be updated without my identity. I was furious. My parents are not my identity and being an orphan does not mean you are without an identity.”
Growing in a convent
While the authors have thanked the institutions and the convents for doing good work caring for the orphans, Kamal is less forgiving about how orphan children are treated. She tells that in 2011, an orphan died after being treated as a ‘slave’ by the sisters of the convent. “This happened in Kolkata when the nuns refused to take the orphan to the hospital saying that she was faking stomach pain to avoid doing her daily chores,” says Kamal.
She says the convent even tried to sabotage her studies. “After I completed Class 8, they told me that I had studied enough,” she says. “They asked me what I would do by studying any further... They said that my destiny is to serve a senior nun in the convent.” But Kamal says she did not give in. “We were treated like cattle. I am not afraid of speaking out and I have no regrets... I fought for my education and when I became the first one to complete Class 10 among the orphans with me and before me, I knew no one could stop me.”
Kamal says she was discouraged from pursuing further studies, despite doing well in her class and her interest. “They pointed to my marks in Maths, saying it was low compared to what I scored in my other subjects,” she says.
Nina meets daring Kamal
When Nina first met Kamal she was impressed. “I found her outspoken and daring,” says Nina. For Kamal, Nina was “just another aunty who visited the orphanage.” But when once girls had to write letters to the sponsors, Nina refused to allow the regular practice of a nun writing the letter on the blackboard only to be copied by the home’s children. Nina had won Kamal over then. Nina gave the orphans their own voice, to write what they wanted to their sponsors. As time passed, Nina became Kamal’s guardian. “She became my elder sister,” says Kamal, who travels regularly from Chennai to Bengaluru to spend the summer vacation at Nina’s home.