HYDERABAD: Given the polarised world we live in, it is not easy for a young man to navigate the complex landscape of growing up as a Muslim boy, being adopted by a Hindu family and then returning to his base identity of a Muslim, all in a matter of a decade.
But that is the crazy life 22-year-old Mohd Khaleel Ghori from Hyderabad has lived for the past 10 years. He has gone from Khaleel, to Altaf to Abhinav Singh and back again to Khaleel and is now trying to put together the jigsaw puzzle of his life. Not surprisingly, many of the pieces no longer fit.
The young man vanished without a trace from his home in Hyderabad in 2014, leaving behind a life that would one day become unrecognisable to him. His family says they had sent him out for a chore, and he never returned. He says he left home as a 12-year-old to make a living. He assumed the name of Altaf on the way, landed up in a shelter home in Ghaziabad and was adopted by a Hindu family from Kanpur about three years ago. They named him Abhinav.
Khaleel's unrelenting biological mother, Sara, finally tracked him down to Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh and brought him home after his adopted parents let him go.
Double lives: Khaleel hopes to stay in touch with adoptive kin Police officials in Hyderabad said when Khaleel's adopted family took him to get him an Aadhaar card and he entered his biometrics, his original Aadhaar details popped up. Khaleel's adopted father entered his new cell number there. This helped the Hyderabad police track Khaleel down.
In the process, the boy, Sara and her husband Mohd Arshad Ghori, a window glass fitter, lost, was replaced by a young man, burdened with two lifetimes. Khaleel is currently in class XII. But putting him through school again may not be as easy as all his identity documents now show him as Abhinav.
He still dreams of shuffling between Kanpur and Hyderabad, navigating the starkly different customs, traditions, and religions - Hinduism and Islam - that define his fractured identity. "My adoptive parents said the right thing to do is to live with my biological parents," Khaleel told TOI, seated next to Sara and brother, Aqeel. Dressed in black trousers and a peach-coloured shirt, he appears a little lost, detached, and perhaps out of place.
Reflecting on his life since being adopted from shelter three years ago, he adds, "Outside school, I didn't have many friends (in my adopted home). I spent my time studying or helping my mother with chores. I'm my sister's stressbuster. Whenever she was in a bad mood or stressed about her preparations to become a govt teacher, I entertained her with my playful antics."
It was his sister who named him Abinav, and he admits to being closest to her in the family he left behind in Kanpur.
Unexpected turn of events But everything changed on Dec 1, Sunday evening. "I was taken to meet two people I had never met before. I was told they were my biological mother and brother. I couldn't recognise them, but they had all the proof - childhood photos, school records, even my Aadhaar card," he said, still processing the unexpected turn his life has taken.
It is as if someone had taken an eraser and rubbed off all his memories from childhood. He still can't remember anything from the 12 years he spent in Hyderabad. But he is keen to find out. Leaving behind his life again, he boarded a train on Tuesday, Dec 4, along with his biological family. Until he was adopted about three years ago, Khaleel lived his life first as an orphan.
"This can be a case of dissociative amnesia," says Charan Teja Koganti, neuropsychiatrist, KIMS Hospital, Hyderabad. "When someone goes through trauma or neglect, the brain blocks out all important people or events. They even forget their identity. They form a new identity, either by themselves or given by someone else."
Sara, however, says nothing matters more to her than her children. "I sold everything I had to look for Khaleel, and I'm happy he is finally back," she says. She sold a large part of her gold jewellery to print 'missing' posters and advertise through various channels to find her son.
Recalling the day her son went missing, she says, "It was a day before the Samagra Kutumba Survey. We sent Khaleel with his cousin to photocopy our documents. He sent the papers back saying he'd return later. Hours turned into days, and days into years, but he never came back. We even went to Mumbai, as many said missing children often end up there. I had complete faith in the Almighty and never lost hope."
Khaleel, however, started believing he was an orphan. "Before boarding a train to Delhi, I vaguely remember living with a man who told me my name was Altaf and that I had no family. That stayed with me, and I lived by it for the last 10 years," he says.
Now reunited, Khaleel and his family face the daunting task of navigating his three identities-Altaf, Abinav, and Khaleel. Complications abound.
Moving on with lifeKhaleel's suggestion of shuffling between two families, meanwhile, isn't acceptable to his adoptive parents. "Now that he has a family, he should live with them," says Sanehi Singh, Khaleel's adoptive father and a retired govt teacher. Sounding helpless, Singh adds that his family and he want to move on with their lives.
"I will miss my (adopted) sister the most," Khaleel says. "Here, I have a younger sister, and hopefully, this void will be filled by her," he adds, reflecting on his favourite memory with his adoptive parents-celebrating his first Raksha Bandhan three years ago.
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