Adoptee returns to India from Sweden in search of her roots in Mysuru

Jolly Sandberg (right) visiting Maddur to trace her roots. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

She was barely seven-and-a-half years old in 1992 when she left an adoption agency in Bengaluru with her adoptive parents. Though Jolly Sandberg is settled in Sweden now with her husband and a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, the quest for her roots has brought her back to India.

“I need to know about my past to understand myself. Also, I want to tell my daughter where I come from and show her my home country,” said Ms. Sandberg.

Born somewhere in Karnataka, Ms. Sandberg had been admitted to St. Mary’s Convent, a boarding school in Bengaluru, by a neighbour from Maddur in Mandya district after her mother’s untimely death by suicide orphaned her at the tender age of around five. Subsequently, she was transferred to Ashraya Adoption Agency in Bengaluru from where she was sent for adoption to a Swedish couple under the Guardians and Wards Act that prevailed in the country prior to 2011.

Jolly Sandberg, an adoptee from Sweden, who is in Mysuru to reconnect with her past. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

After explaining how “rootless” she felt in Sweden, where she landed as a seven-and-a-half-year-old girl and later “repressed her Kannada language and her memories of the first few years in her native land” to adapt and lead a life in her new country, Ms. Sandberg said she was longing to unearth the truth of her past, according to a statement released to the media.

Jolly Sandberg’s photo traced from her records in India. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

However, the search for her roots does not appear to be any different from the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. With sketchy and vague information, Ms. Sandberg has not been able to fully crack the puzzle of her past.

Anjali Pawar from the Adoptee Rights Council, an NGO, who is accompanying Ms. Sandberg, said their visit to St. Mary’s Convent and Ashraya Adoption Agency in Bengaluru showed that she had been “relinquished” by a neighbour, Jayamma, who resided behind the High School in Maddur.

When they visited Maddur, they realised that Jayamma had passed away, but another neighbour, Lakshmamma, could recall that Ms. Sandberg was in fact “Janu”, who was taken care of by her grandmother Thimmamma after her mother Vasantha remarried following the death of her first husband. Eventually, Vasantha ended her life after which Thimmamma, on her deathbed, asked Jayamma to take care of Janu, who was subsequently admitted to the boarding school in Bengaluru.

Unable to trace anybody related to her mother in Maddur, Ms. Sandberg has arrived in Mysuru, hoping to locate her father’s native village and any of his relatives. “She has these memories of playing with a baby elephant and a large lake near her house,” said Ms. Pawar.

Trying to weave together the threads of her past, Ms. Sandberg, who is also accompanied by her husband and daughter, along with representatives from the Adoptees Rights Council, is seeking information from anybody who can connect her with her cousins, aunts, uncles, or any other relatives.