The making of Saving Chintu begins with a question: “Why do so many American, Australian, and UK parents adopt from India?” To find an answer to this question, Tushar Tyagi conducted extensive research in India and discovered some surprising and enlightening insights. Bringing it to life, he then created the film, Saving Chintu, which revolves around an American-Indian gay couple who travel to India to adopt a child living with HIV in an orphanage. The film premiered on Open Theatre today (September 27).
After watching the trailer, we quickly sat down with Tushar, before lunchtime, to learn what went into this heartwarming film. It took a year and a half to nearly complete the film and much of the time was spent on research.
"When we started doing research, the first thing was finding these American, Australian, and UK parents who had adopted kids from India. And my first curiosity was like, why India? Because there are a lot of countries from which you can adopt kids. So, I came to know that in India, there are closed adoptions. The rest of the countries have open adoption," Tushar exclusively told us on Zoom.
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Explaining what open and closed adoption are, he stated, "Open adoption is that biological parents can be part of the child's life as much as they want, even after the child is adopted. In India, closed adoption means that biological parents are not informed about where, which country, who has adopted the child, or any address or phone number—nothing. Only the child has the authority to reach out to biological parents once they are 21 years old if they want to reach out. So that's why a lot of prospective parents come to India."
During the research process, the Gulabee filmmaker learned about CARA, aka the Central Adoption Resource Authority, which came into action around 1990. Before that, all the orphanages acted as independent entities, with no centralised system.
"That was also happening in the film, and that's why we used to hear that children are stolen from fairs and have been sold to either brothels or orphanages because they would be put up for a higher price for these prospective international parents, to figure out who the wardens were. Because after CARA, everything is centralised," he added.
Tushar describes a chaotic and heartbreaking environment and states that conditions back then were much worse than they are today. It was so 'heartbreaking' even for Tushar while he was recalling the days when he visited those orphanages during his research.
"It was like getting groceries; you could just walk in, sign some papers, and take a child home. No follow-ups, nothing," he laments, emphasising the lack of oversight in the adoption process. His findings were alarming and led him to document these injustices within the film.
Moving forward, Tushar addressed the challenges he faced during the research and told us, "These kids are put up like cattle. They segregate kids into age ranges."
Explaining the conditions, the director said, "These kids have big halls. Now what happened is when we entered—I’m talking about a very big orphanage near Delhi—when we entered, these kids were sitting on rolled mattresses in the room, and outside, two men were sitting on a small mat. So these kids were not allowed to go out. They have a specific time that they can go out. It's so heartbreaking. You open the mattress at night and sleep. You sit in the hall all day with the mattresses all around."
"Something very powerful that could be very controversial. But the thing is, I made a film in 2013 in India when I came from America again called Gulabee. And I went to Kamathipura for research. It was all about sex workers. In Kamathipura, I saw a similar kind of behaviour with women; they were shoved into a room and not allowed to come out. If they have to come out, there is one guy kind of attached to them, or I’m not getting the word—kind of assigned to them. Wherever they have to go, the guy goes with them. A similar thing I saw with the kids; they are just shoved in a room, though the room is much bigger,” he added.
"Even today, orphanages can be very protective. When we visited, we were closely monitored and not allowed to take photos." He recounts feeling the weight of secrecy and control. "They were scared. The staff made it clear that they didn’t want the truth to get out," he says, highlighting the fear that still lingers around these institutions.
"It's just very heartbreaking," exclaims Tushar.
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Yet, amidst these challenges, he found hope in the children. "Kids were so blooming and eager to know who we were. It was heart-wrenching," he recalls.
When he asked a nine-year-old boy, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" the boy replied, "Bhaiya, yaha se niklunga tabhi kuch banunga na."
After a pause, we asked Tushar how the film Saving Chintu will impact adoptions and LGBTQ+ stories in Indian cinema. Replying to this, he said, “The entire thing is that for the longest time, I didn’t touch the LGBTQIA subject because it’s very sensitive. All the films that I had seen at festivals and everywhere were all about very stereotypical themes—sex, drugs, rape—which are there, but that’s just not what the community is about. So I wanted to take my time.”
He notes that the logline for Saving Chintu initially focused on an Indian-American gay couple wanting to adopt a child with HIV. “I wanted to showcase that LGBTQIA parents can be just as nurturing and capable as anyone else,” he emphasises.
During the conversation, Tyagi highlights a shocking statistic: "CARA receives around 70,000 to 80,000 applications from LGBTQIA couples each year, but these are consistently denied and not entertained." He points out the irony that these children could be offered a better life outside India, yet the system remains rigid. "It's heartbreaking that just because India doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage, these children miss out on potential families.
"LGBTQIA parents can be equally good parents. How can you have the mentality that they are not able to be good parents?" he questioned.
When Tushar asked the CARA organisation why, in India, it’s not legal for LGBTQIA people to adopt kids, he inquired about countries where LGBTQIA marriage is legal. "If you get, say, a same-sex couple wanting to adopt a child from America or the UK, or other countries like Canada where it's legal, do you guys entertain those applications?
They told him, "We get around 70,000 to 80,000 applications in a year from LGBTQIA couples. There are many more applications from LGBTQIA couples than from regular couples, but those are not entertained."
"Like in films, you do a fraud. You choose between fraud or saving the life of a kid. Saving the life of a kid, though it’s a fraud, for him, it's worth it, right? But now it can't happen just because it's centralised, so the 70,000 or 80,000 or whatever 100,000 applications that come from same-sex couples from all over the world are not entertained," Tushar Tyagi signed off.