To the Circus!

Shortly after coming to India LaDonna found volunteer opportunities at the Lav-Kush Balvikash Kendra orphanage (http://www.navjeewansansthan.org/). (Lav and Kush were the twin sons of Ram and Sita, who were born and raised in the forest in the absence of their father; see the last half of the Ramayana for more details.) B.S. Parihar, a local industrialist and philanthropist founded Lav-Kush and the orphanage currently provides care for 45 children from newborns through 22-year olds. Many of the children were born to unwed mothers, a status that still carries a stigma in modern India. It is thus rare to find single mothers raising children. Most such children are aborted or abandoned. In addition, given the strong Indian preference for sons, boys are more quickly adopted and thus it is girls who make up the majority of the population of Lav-Kush.

It is not surprising that the girls of Lav-Kush have fallen in love with LaDonna (and the feeling is mutual). She loves to help the nursery workers hold the babies and then she works/plays with the older girls when they return from school.
To celebrate her time with them LaDonna offered to take the girls ages 5-22 to the circus and further offered my services as an additional chaperone. So to the Asiad Circus we went. (I‘m not sure if “Asiad” is a three-syllable word or a variation on Asia “D;” it’s no Ringling Bros. but was still quite entertaining.) We got our money’s worth. The show lasted a full two and one-half hours and thanks to the management our group was permitted to sit in the Rs. 100 section even though we had paid only Rs. 75 each for our block of 23 tickets.

I was recruited as event photographer and of course each girl wanted her picture taken with “ma’am.” By the time we made it back to NLU House we were both exhausted but pleased to have been of service “to the least of these.” When we consider what God has done for us, taking some girls to the circus is the least we can do.