KOLKATA: Dr Michelle Harrison had everything a career-woman can boast of. A gynaecologist-cum- psychiatrist, she was the
worldwide executive director of Johnson & Johnson Institute for Children and taught at leading universities like Harvard, Rutgers and the University of Pittsburgh. She even successfully battled cancer. But then she quit everything, sold her home in New Jersey and came to Kolkata to be a mother to differently-abled abandoned children. It began with the adoption of her second child, Cecilia Devyani Harrison, in 1984. In 2000, she decided to bring Cecilia to Kolkata. “I wanted to unite her with her biological parents,” said Harrison, who speaks broken Bengali.
In 2001, they went to International Mission of Hope (IMH), the organization from where Cecilia was adopted. At IMH, a mashi surfaced. “We were told she was Cecilia’s biological mother. They even produced a twin sister, a biological father and a grandmother who were pining for her,” she recalled. Since most adopted children have a desire to know their roots, there was no reason not to accept what we were told. It was only after Cecilia overheard something that she felt “didn’t make sense” that Harrison started suspecting something was amiss. She decided to go for a DNA test and discovered Cecilia’s DNA matched none of them.
Moreover, Harrison found that differently-abled kids in several such homes were kept tied to their beds. Her tryst with deceit, falsehood and the appalling state of these children helped make her mind up to do something about them. Immediately after her successful battle against cancer, she sold her New Jersey home and came to Kolkata to build Shishur Sevay, a shelter-cum-facilitating centre in New Alipore’s Sahapur for girls with disability of varying degrees, including microcephaly, autism and cerebral palsy. In 2013, Harrison set up a learning centre called Ichhe Dana on the top floor of Shishur Sevay, where the girls attend classes every day. Three of them will be appearing for the National Institute for Open Schooling examination next year. Harrison also introduced the Sweden-made Tobii Eye Tracker, which allows communication via eye movements. For the first time in India, girls with disabilities could communicate their thoughts and needs using their eyes on a screen. The system is used both in class and for informal communication and is often set up by the older girls to speak with their sisters.
In the course of running Shishur Sevay, Harrison has even tackled extortion calls and veiled threats by realtors. She now spends sleepless nights worrying about the safety of her children. With her resources depleting fast, she is also worrying about funding the needs of her children after her death. Harrison’s daughters — Heather Volik, a lawyer, and Cecilia, a drummer — have set up an organization called Friends of Shishur Sevay in the US to raise funds for their mother’s home. “My daughters are my pillars of strength. Both keep coming to visit me once in a while,” Harrison added.