Sipping a glass of fresh lime soda in a small restaurant on JM Road, Germany-based Shireen Alpa Potthast is gripped by myriad emotions as she tries and absorb the dramatic events that took place in her life less than 48 hours back.
That was when she met her biological mother, whom she had been searching for over 15 years. “When I was 15-16 years old, I started searching for my roots. I grew up in Germany. My mom is Indian and my father is a German. They never hid anything from me about my background and always supported my search for my biological mother. For years, I kept contacting the adoption agency in Pune, SOFOSH, asking them to share information about my mother’s whereabouts, but they never gave me an answer. I couldn’t accept it and kept my search on. Then I contacted the organisation Against Child Trafficking (ACT) and the root search done by their representative led me to my mother,” says Potthast, who works as a social worker in Germany for an organisation that works for refugees.