Patricia's choice: the first Indian-origin director of Alliance Francaise Delhi on her two mothers & adoption story
Facing it
Loison tells this story with the openness of someone who has told the story before. Writing the book also made her look at her biological mother's decision closely, obsessively, repeatedly. It was also the chance to tell her story, her way. 'It is said if a chick is made to leave the mother, some die and some survive. So, it is with a human child. Whether you blend or cling, it's a decision you make. You make your new family yours. Whichever family or the mother you came from, whatever happened before, you can't have that. You can't have both….'
When she was in her 30s, Gisèle gave her her case file. 'I am told she breastfed me,' Loison says softly. Each detail has added to her mental picture of how she wants to imagine her biological mother right up to the moment of separation — from her skin, hands, and bosom to another's. These feelings she also confronted when she gave birth. 'When you give birth, you put yourself in a lineage of women but when I was giving birth my biological mom wasn't there….' The book was Loison's way to give her corporeal form, make her seem alive, and around.
This is perhaps not a story she wants to close; when she was part of the Press contingent covering French president Nicolas Sarkozy's official trip to India in 2010 for LCI, the news channel of TF1 France's first private TV channel and the biggest in Europe, she went to Shishu Bhavan to try to get a lead that she could follow up about her mother but to no avail.
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