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Swedish Daughter Tracks Down Indian Mother After 42 Years In An Emotional Encounter

Swedish Daughter Tracks Down Indian Mother After 42 Years In An Emotional Encounter
BEN RICHARDSON VIA GETTY IMAGES

"I always wondered about my mother in India. Who was she? How was she? Why did she leave me?"

These questions have hounded Elisabet Purve-Jorendal who was born in India and given away for adoption in 1973 when she was less than six months old.

Purve-Jorendal, who was later adopted from an orphanage in Pune when she was two-and-a-half years old by a Swedish couple, told BBC that she had always wanted to know more about 'her roots'. But all she had was the adoption papers with the names of her mother and grandparents on it.

"I realised how hard it was to get anywhere with that. How do you find someone in a country of 1.2 billion people? It's like looking for a needle in a haystack. You must have the right connections, know how to press the right buttons," Purve-Jorendal who now lives in Helsingborg on the Sweden-Denmark border, told BBC.

According to the data shared by the Women and Child Development Ministry in 2015, the adoption rate of of children in India is between 800 to 1,000 per year.

Finally, with the help of Against Child Trafficking (ACT), a voluntary organisation based in Belgium, she finally found her birth mother's address.

And finally, when Purve-Jorendal came face-to-face with her birth mother in a small village in Maharashtra, she couldn't ask any of the questions that she had dreamt about. All she could do was stare at her.

Read the full story here.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.