"amar Choto Shundarie"

I am incredibly blessed to have made a friend in Kolkata who is able to go back there every year and sends out email updates on the happenings there. I am also incredibly blessed in that she had an emotional connection with a lot of the same children at Shishu Bhavan as I did. I am incredibly blessed to have her even though I find myself in mourning a lot more often than I'd like to (or maybe that's a good thing?).

She is how I found out, before my 2nd trip, about beautiful Jayanti's death. And now she has sent another email and I find that my heart is broken again.

Shyama, perhaps one of the strongest children at Shishu, who has made it through so much - abandonment, malnutrition, fevers, surgeries - in her short life, has passed. She had been taken to the hospital shortly before I left in September and there was always a possibility that she would not make it out. But I hoped she would, as she had at least twice before. She was still in the hospital when I left and I never got to say goodbye. I know she knows I love her, though, and that settles my beating heart a little. Shyama, my little trooper, you will be missed.