Santosh

While the media is full of gory stories of rape and murder, PALNA continues in its quiet way to spread its message of Joy.

On October 10, 2011, a seven year old boy was abandoned in the PALNA cradle . The poor lad was frightened and confused at being stuffed into a little basket. As soon as teh siren rang signalling teh arrival of a child in teh cradle, the PALNA staff took him in, bathed and fed him and had him assessed medically.

Severely undernourished and scared out of his wits, he could not even walk. It took our team a couple of months to get Santosh to smile, and interact comfortably with the other children and the caregivers. The PALNA food helped - as did the environment!

Our team was parallelly working on tracing his parents, and were able to find his Mother with the help of Delhi Police. In March 2012 we tracked down his family – his pregnant mother had been abandoned by her husband. She could barely feed herself, much less feed a growing seven year old! But she missed her son Santosh desperately. She wanted him back!

Now came the problem. Santosh was not best pleased to give up his halcyon surrounding in PALNA and three square meals a day. After much counselling he was restored to his family, and his mother was advised to leave her children at our day-care centre so that they could be fed and cared for.

This is PALNA care. It focuses on what is best for any child that crosses its threshold.