DIMPLE MENEZES: UNGRATEFUL ADOPTEE

Every adoptee who contemplates searching–or just accessing their own information–also contemplates what they may find. And that contemplation usually leads straight to disaster.

What if my birthmother is..A fundamentalist? A Democrat? A stripper? A feminist? Hillary Clinton? Rosie O’Donnell? A social worker? A nun? What if she’s a grifter and gave away 7 others? What if she reads Harlequin romances or is Dick Cheney’s secretary? What if Dick Cheney is my birthfather? What if my birthfather wants to move in and sleep on my couch? What if he’s a rapist? A pimp? A junkie? A drunk? A priest? (That’s how he got together with my mother the nun). What if my birth family thinks Thomas Kincade is a great artist? Or pickets abortion clinics? Or are Scientologists?? Or keeps John Kerry signs in their yard year ’round? What if they wear polyester? What if they’re old hippies? Old rednecks? What if my grandparents were Nazi collaborators or belong to the Revolutionary Communist Party and can’t speak in coherent sentences? What if my sister breeds Pomeranians? Or my brothers guzzle beer every Sunday during NASCAR or cook meth in their trailer? What if they don’t like me? What if they like me too much? What if I fall in love with my brother? Or my sister? Or worse?

Bastard Nation even has a page devoted to just such scenarios: True Tales of Revolting Reunions.

Fortunately, most of the time you’ll find people just like you–or at least a reasonable facsimile–and things work out OK…as OK as any family relationships work out…unless you are…

Dimple Menezes, a permanent resident of Chandigarh, India currently residing in Adoption Hell. According to stories published recently in The Calcutta Telegraph and The Scotsman Dimple’s reunion far exceeds anything found in the annals of BN’s Revolting Reunions.

Of course, Dimple should have known what to expect–reasonably. At the age of 9 days she was tossed into a garbage bin adjacent a local hospital near Amritsar in the northern state of Punjab where she was rescued from a pack of drooling dogs. She was adopted eventually by the hospital superintendent Dr. Sulochana Michael Karanjia. Dimple’s twin sister, whom she learned about years later, was kept by the biological parents.

By all accounts the adoption was and is a happy one, and Dimple has led a relatively untroubled life–except for the arrival about 16 years ago of the biological parents Harbans Kaur and Giani Sukhdev Singh, hereafter referred to as The Singhs. The Singhs, who later pled impoverishment for Dimple’s dive into the Dumpster, learned of her whereabouts from a newspaper account of “a garbage baby.” Tracking down Dimple and her adoptive mother, they demanded that Dr. Karanjia send Dimple to them during school holidays. Upon arrival they insisted on keeping her. It particularly “pained” Mrs. Singh to see Dimple, born a Sikh, reared in a Christian family. Dr. Karanjia relunctantly agreed to the transfer, but Dimple refused to cooperate, and the Singhs eventually returned her to her adoptive family.

Fast forward a dozen years. Dimple is now graduated from college with a degree in computer science, has a good job at Reliance Telecom, and gets engaged to dreadful Christian, Jude Eric Menezes. The Singhs, who according to Dimple have never shown a single regret over trying to turn her into a doggie diner, much less apologized for the unfortunate incident, decide to assert their “parental rights” over her, not only by insisting that she leave her fiance and marry a Sikh they have picked out for her, but that she turn over part of her salary to them–ie, support their skanky asses.

Since this demand, details are fuzzy (in the articles), but apparently the Singhs, even after Dimple’s 2003 marriage to Menezes, continued their campaign to “assert their rights” –or as Dimple prefers to call it–their campaign of “harassment.” Recently she has taken a step to remove the Singhs from her life permanently: she’s suing them for 1 million rupees (nearly $23,000) as compensation for abandonment and neglect.

As Dimple says:

They have no right to interfere in my life now….Did I commit a crime by coming out alive from a garbage dump full of killer dogs?

The Singhs have ignored court summons in the past, but since learning recently of the compensation suit they have decided to disown Dimple. Mr. Singh, now says that she is not his daughter after all, it was all a mistake. She’s really the daughter of a former neighbor. They’re due to appear in court on July 20.

Could lawsuits like Dimple’s catch on in the US, especially now that “legalized” baby abandonment is encouraged as a way to “place” newborns outside of the ethical norms of best practice? While Safe Havens are obviously not as traumatic as a pit of starving dogs, we hope so. While the Singhs have an excuse for their actions–though a piss poor moral excuse at that–our local dump pimps have none.

Oh, I nearly forgot. Click here for Dimple’s recipe for breaded pepper chicken. It’s so simple even Bastardette can fix it.