The Five-Hundred-Rupee Note (891 words)

 

The Williamsons had been a happy couple until one day their adopted son, seven-year-old Ramon, asked the inevitable question.

They had always known that, sooner or later, he would want to know where he had come from. Ramon was Raman in the records at the adoption centre in India. Until then, they had tried to shield him from his past as much as possible, bringing him up like any other American child.

They had given him everything a well-to-do American family could provide: fancy video games, remote-controlled cars, countless board games, a bicycle and a manual scooter that occupied a good part of his room. He attended karate classes, swimming lessons and soccer practice. He was learning to play the clarinet. Except for the colour of his skin and his Indian features, he was, in every respect, a thoroughly American boy, mingling with his friends without the slightest inhibition.

Now, however, he wanted to know about his biological parents and why he had been given up for adoption.

It was simple curiosity. He was less than a year old when he was left at the adoption centre. Ramon had no desire to leave his adoptive parents or return to the real parents or the life he had never known. He loved the Williamsons deeply and made them proud with his excellent grasp, sporting abilities and exemplary behaviour. They, in turn, adored him and would do anything to keep him happy.

Ordinarily, adoptive parents were reluctant to encourage contact with birth families, out of w fear of uncovering unpleasant or even traumatic truths. But the Williamsons decided that their son deserved to know his roots.

The adoption centre, however, refused to disclose the identity of his biological parents. It was against their policy. After considerable persuasion, they obtained only two pieces of information: the year when Ramon was brought to the centre and the name of the small town he belonged.

Most people would have stopped there. But the Williamsons did not.

They hired a company that specialised in tracing the biological families of adopted children. The fees were substantial, but the company had an impressive record. Its investigators knew how to piece together fragments from adoption-centre employees, police records, orphanage registers and old local contacts. Sometimes they went from door to door, questioning people who might remember a child, a woman or an incident from years ago. It could take months, even years.

After almost a year, the Williamsons received the call they had been waiting for.

They travelled to India with Ramon, ostensibly on holiday to the country of his birth. They had not told him about their search. Nor did they tell him what they had discovered.

At the hotel, a representative of the tracing company met the couple privately in the dining hall. Ramon was not with them. He was swimming in the hotel pool.

The information was disturbing.

The investigators had traced his biological mother, though only after considerable difficulty.

Ramon was an illegitimate child. The woman could not or would not identify his father. She had lived by selling her body for food. She remembered leaving the child at the adoption centre, but apparently felt no remorse. To her, the child had been one more burden she could no longer carry.

The investigator had found her begging at the entrance to a local temple in that town.

The description was difficult to absorb. She was thin and haggard, possibly her once well-defined face ravaged by hunger and years of abuse. Her long hair was matted and unwashed. A torn, dirty red sari barely covered her body.

The Williamsons verified every detail. The tracing company had a reputation to protect, and they were convinced the information was genuine.

They decided they would see her once, though from a distance.

They had no intention of approaching her. And, above all, they agreed that Ramon should never be told. They felt that some truths, however important, could destroy more than they healed.

That evening, they took Ramon to the temple.

He was delighted by everything he saw: the towering gopurams, the temple chariot, the crowds and, most of all, the elephant. He stopped repeatedly to take photographs, fascinated as the huge animal accepted coins from visitors and ate pieces of coconut.

At the entrance sat a long line of beggars.

The Williamsons walked slowly along the row, dropping ten-rupee notes into the bowls before each beggar.

Then they reached her.

There was no doubt. She was unmistakably the woman they had been searching for from faint resemblance.

For a moment, the couple stood silently before her. They looked at the face of the woman who had given birth to their adopted son—a face marked by poverty, hunger, and a life neither of them could imagine.

Then, without saying a word, each one of the couple dropped a five-hundred-rupee note into her bowl.

They moved on.

Ramon was at the temple precincts. He was standing beside the temple elephant, watching in awe as it curled its trunk around a coconut.

He never saw the woman. He never knew that, a few steps behind him, his adoptive parents had just stood before the woman who had given him life. And the woman never knew that the cheerful little boy watching the elephant was the son she had once left behind.