An Addition to Our Family

By Aniruddha Railkar

This book follows the lives of Ani and Radha as they embark upon a journey to adopt a child from India. As with any journey, they had a lot of ups and downs, but they managed to complete the journey with support from family and friends as well as some divine intervention. The reward was an addition to their family, Shubham. This book should serve as an inspiration to those who make the decision to adopt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781477167809

Aniruddha Railkar

Aniruddha (Ani) Railkar was born in Mumbai, India. He obtained a BSc in Chemistry in 1987 from University of Bombay. He got his MS in Pharmaceutical Sciences from West Virginia University in 1991 and his PhD in Pharmaceutics from the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia in 2000. Ani has over 16 years of experience in research and development in the pharmaceutical industry. He has published in peer reviewed scientific journals in pharmaceutical research. His hobbies include cooking, writing, amateur stage acting, sports and flying. Ani lives in Ambler with his wife, Radha and children Revati and Shubham.

Book preview

An Addition To Our Family

Aniruddha Railkar

Copyright © 2011 by Aniruddha Railkar.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2011919870

ISBN:                  Hardcover                  978-1-4653-9175-9

                              Softcover                 978-1-4653-9174-2

                                 E-book                  978-1-4771-6780-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Contents

ACKNOWLDEGEMENT

Chapter 1: Down Memory Lane

Chapter 2: Graduate School

Chapter 3: Revati

Chapter 4: Adoption Resources

Chapter 5: Let’s Get the Ball Rolling

Chapter 6: Radha’s Visit to P M

Chapter 7: Referral

Chapter 8: My First Meeting with Shubham

Chapter 9: All Hell Breaks Loose

Chapter 10: Building a Rapport

Chapter 11: This Is Not Good

Chapter 12: We Have Custody

Chapter 13: New Delhi, Here We Come

Chapter 14: Back to the US

Chapter 15: Shubham, September 2007–Present

This book is dedicated to my brother, Saurabh Railkar; without whose help addition to our family would not have been possible.

This book is also dedicated to those people who choose to adopt children.

ACKNOWLDEGEMENT

It is difficult to thank anyone and everyone who somehow played a role in this but I am going to try. I hope I can be forgiven for inadvertently omitting people. I would like to thank my supervisors at Johnson and Johnson and Warner-Lambert; the academic staff at Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. On Radha’s behalf I would like to thank her supervisors at Johnson and Johnson and Merck, and her advisor at Temple University. Our companies also provided financial help in the form of adoption assistance.

I would also like to thank JK and other staff at the adoption agency, RR and other caregivers at PM, VS the social worker from ICSW. Mr. MM from the US Consulate in New Delhi, India, who came even when he was sick, to process our application. Our travel agent in India Mrs. MP also deserves our thanks.

Our friends RS, AS, SF, CF, KW, JM and PM. Also our Indian friends SG and KG.

Revati and Shubham’s teacher’s in daycare and in elementary school, but more importantly the pediatricians Drs. CC and UN, the staff at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). My brother’s colleague, Mr. RD and Judge Roshan Dalvi, without whose judgement, the Pune family court would not have handed us Shubham’s custody.

Finally our respective families Mr. and Mrs. Adhikaridesai, my parents-in-law; Radha’s sister, Meera and her husband, Kedar. My mother, Saroj, sister, Aruna and brother-in-law Sudhir, our nieces Sharmila and Kanchan Railkar. My sister-in-law Priyal and nephew Archeet. Their love and support is always a sense of comfort. I cannot find words to thank my brother, Saurabh, without whose efforts we would not have got Shubham and this book would not have been written.

Ultimately, I would like to thank God for helping us complete our family.

Chapter 1: Down Memory Lane

The captain’s voice came over the intercom. Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Delta flight 17 will be landing shortly at John F. Kennedy [JFK] airport in New York City. I was on my way back from India. I was on a business trip to India for about a week. I looked outside. It was 6:30 in the morning on Sunday, September 2, 2007. The sun was just rising over the horizon, and I could see the glistening Manhattan skyline. I straightened my seat, put my tray table away, and prepared for landing.

We landed at 6:50 a.m., our scheduled arrival time. I quickly cleared Immigration and then picked up my checked luggage. I went through Customs, and my limo driver was waiting with a sign in his hand. I flagged him down, and we were on our way to Ambler, Pennsylvania, where I live with my wife, Radha; daughter, Revati; and son, Shubham. As we were pulling out of the parking lot, I called Radha. I was afraid, I might wake her up, but I figured I would let them know that I was on my way and should be home by about 9:00 a.m.

To my surprise, she was indeed awake when I called. She said, We missed you, and we can’t wait till you are home. My daughter said, Dada, I am so happy that you will be home soon. I missed you. I said, I missed you too, see you soon. I was about to hang up when Radha said, Shubham wants to say something. This was a surprise; normally I was used to Radha and Revati saying something because Shubham rarely spoke to me on the phone. He said, Dada, I love you. I said, I love you too. I was very happy. I finally knew that Shubham had grown to love me. Suddenly, my eyes got teary. I started my walk down memory lane from the day Radha and I got married to the present.

Radha and I got married on January 1, 1994. I met Radha for the first time on December 28, 1993. Our marriage was an arranged marriage, which is very common in the Indian culture. We started our life together in Bloomsbury, New Jersey. I was working in Immunobiology Research Institute, a Johnson & Johnson (J&J) company, in Annandale, New Jersey. Our company was leasing space from Exxon, who owned the Annandale site. In August 1994, we got our green cards, and from September 1994, Radha got admitted to the master’s program in Rutgers University. Since we had only one car, we decided to move closer to Rutgers rather than buying another car. Radha also was a novice driver, having got her driver’s license in June 1994. We moved to Highland Park, New Jersey, which was close to the Livingston Campus of Rutgers. Our apartment was on the Rutgers bus route. I started carpooling with two of my colleagues who lived in the New Brunswick–Piscataway area.

All was fine until December 1994, when I found out that by February 1995, I was going to be laid off from my job. We were given two months to find a job either within or outside J&J. Our human resource personnel had set up a lot of classes on making presentations and writing employment letters and résumés. I also started looking for jobs both within and outside J&J. On one hand, I was very upset with J&J for making the decision to lay me off, but on the other hand, I was also excited that now I could pursue other options. If I stayed at J&J, I probably would not have considered going back to school to get my PhD.

I had been taking graduate courses as a nonmatriculate student at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science (PCP&S or PCP), the oldest pharmacy school in the United States. I had taken two courses already. So I decided to have a two-pronged approach to my future. One of the options was to go to PCP full-time as a PhD student. But I would consider that only if PCP was able to give me full tuition waiver and graduate assistantship. So I applied to PCP for the spring 1995 semester. The second option would be to look for a job, preferably in New Jersey. But we had two months to look for a job. Besides, as a part of the layoffs, J&J was giving us a severance package, two weeks pay for every year of employment. I had worked at J&J for just about four years. So I was going to get paid for another two months. In all, I had four months to find a new job.

Unfortunately, the job market was saturated with people like us. Carter-Wallace, another company, was laying off hordes of people because one of their major drugs was found to cause sickle-cell anemia. The company had bet all its resources on that drug and was forced to lay off people after it withdrew the drug from the market. My boss at the time was Dr. F M. As soon as we found out that we were going to be laid off, he pulled me into his office and counseled me to actively start looking for jobs. His wife, Dr. E Z, was working at Parke-Davis (PD), a Warner-Lambert (WL) Company. This was before Pfizer acquired WL. PD was under a consent decree from the FDA because of some problems that the FDA had found during an inspection of PD sites. One of the consequences of the consent decree was that PD was hiring. Soon after, I got a call from the HR person at WL asking me to come for an interview. I was interviewed at WL, and it went very well. But within a few days, I got a letter from WL HR, thanking me for my interest but kindly declining to hire me. I was very distraught. Fortunately, I got a call from Amgen. So I went to Thousand Oaks, California, and was interviewed at Amgen. Again, the interview went very well.

While I was in Thousand Oaks, I called Dr. M H, the hiring manager of WL. I told him that I had received the refusal letter. Dr. MH said, The first thing you should do is disregard that letter. I will talk to HR. I was encouraged by those words and glad that the WL door had not closed completely. I also called Dr. FM, who in turn talked to his wife. Dr. FM told me that his wife had personally talked to Dr. MH, and I was still in the running. Within a few days of coming back from Thousand Oaks, the same HR person from WL that had sent me the letter called me. I was surprised. He said, Ani, I am calling to offer you the job. At the risk of sounding overly elated, I calmed myself down and asked, May I please think about it for a few days. He said, Sure. I am going to send you an offer letter, and in the letter, I will give you a week from receiving that letter to either accept or reject the offer. As soon as I hung up, I called Dr. FM at home and told him the good news.

However, I had not heard from Amgen and was hoping to get an offer from them so as to have the opportunity to evaluate the pros and cons of the two offers. I called the HR person in Amgen, and she told me that the hiring manager had not got back to her. She also told me that they were still in the process of screening other candidates. This was disappointing. Not that I would have accepted the offer if it came, but I would have liked to have a choice and some leverage for bargaining.

I really liked the location and surroundings at Amgen. I also liked the fact that it was a good company to work for. Although I had not been hired by Amgen, during my interview, they put me in touch with a relocation service and a real estate agent. I spent one day looking at apartments and houses in areas in and around Thousand Oaks. They also told me that they would find a job for Radha. But the downside was that California in general and Thousand Oaks, which was near Los Angeles, were not cheap places to stay. Coming from New Jersey, which is not cheap either, California was a shock. Yet another issue was that Amgen worked on proteins or large drug molecules. Since proteins get degraded in the stomach when administered orally, they had to be administered as a liquid parenterally or by injection. Most of my experience was working with small drug molecules, which can be administered orally as a tablet or capsule (i.e., a solid dosage form).

But Radha was still finishing up her master’s program in Rutgers, so I was the only income source. I was going to get severance pay from J&J starting February 6. I did not think that waiting for Amgen to get back to me would be a good idea. So again, I called Dr. FM, and he advised me to take the WL job. I talked to