29th of January

I went to pick Khushbu up from her hospital where she works and upon finding her I also found a small dirt ball clutching her. Closer inspection revealed that it was a small child.

Khushbu had been crossing the road to reach her office from the main hospital complex (a hazardous task at the best of times as the concept of pedestrian crossings is very foreign here) and she found an approximately 18 Ð 24 month girl crying her head off in the middle of the road. Seems that this child was lost, but was unwilling or unable to communicate her name or where she lived.

Khushbu took the child to the security gate office, but the security officers there were unwilling to take responsibility for such a child. She received repeated phone calls from her boss asking why the hell had she picked up the child, didn’t she know that she should have just left her there.

After about 30 minutes we dumped the child in the security office in a blanket and started a quick tour of the hospital. It was simply beautiful, especially after compared with what I had experienced in Shimla. The wards were clean, no blood on the floor, walls, bed linen and the equipment worked.

A short while later we received a phone call saying that the police would take over the case and we had to take the child to the nearest police station. The hospitals car was called and a driver, security officer and some random chap accompanied us to the station. The police then declined to have anything to do with her unless we took the girl around to the slum towns to try and find her parents. Fortunately the police agreed to accompany us.

Going through the slums was well worth it, seeing a bit of India that I would have really been a bit worried about going by myself. Each time we stopped we were flocked by horde of people trying to see what the policeman was talking about.

We spent about an hour trying to find the girl’s parents with no success. Whether that was due to not finding them or their unwillingness to come forward and admit to owning the girl. In fact all we managed to find out was that when the policeman yelled at the girl and poked her she would hide in Khushbu’s shawl and wipe snot on it.

We finally left the girl with the police who were going to transfer her to a larger station who would then deal with her.