HER feet were aching, but she knew she had to go on flipping chapatis to ensure her 15 teenage children who devoured 15 chapatis each at one sitting didn’t go hungry.
Jasmine Selvarani Emmanuel, the Head of Centre of Foundation Studies in Wawasan Open University, now 60, is an unorthodox mother.
She is a mother of 45 children of different races.
“It all started when I was a teenage girl, I went to a children’s home to do some charity work, and I was carrying this chubby baby. When I put the baby down, he started to cry because the babies are hardly ever carried or cuddled.
“It was then when a teenage girl, an orphan who lived in the home said to me ‘Do you think we are a zoo or a museum? You people come here to ease your conscience because you think you are doing your duty for the unfortunate. Today you carry this baby, tomorrow who carries this child?’
“That night I prayed, I told God that if you give me a man who will love other people’s children as himself, I am willing to do something about it.”
Years later, Jasmine met her husband, a police officer, badminton coach and a man whom children and young adults gravitated towards.
“That time I was a teacher in a Sekolah Menengah Sains Tun Syed Sheh Shahbudin, a boarding school in Bukit Mertajam. There were a number of brilliant children from East Malaysia that were brought here to study.
“They were brought in pretty young and were struggling because the culture is very different. They came from living in a longhouse to living in a boarding school. A lot of them were crying, and they were only 11 to 12-years-old at that time and will be under scholarship until they finish university.
“There was no culturalisation. Nothing was done to help them adapt to the Malay culture.”
Jasmine said that they only had plane tickets to go back once a year, and during their first Christmas, they had nowhere to go as the hostels were closed during holidays.
“When my husband and I saw them, we could not turn them away, and so we brought them into our home.
“That was when we started,” she said. It was the first year of their marriage.
Year after year, they took in five to eight students at one time and slowly, the family grew. Her church and community also acquainted them with suicidal youths. Jasmine and her husband received them as their own.
At one point, all 45 children were home for the weekend, and though her neighbours and friends offered the children a place to sleep that night, they decided against it, preferring to sleep on the kitchen floor.
“Somehow people just followed my husband and me. So they came to our home, and we helped them.
“We were newly married then. Because of this, we chose not to have our own children – we wanted our lives to be for these kids.
“Both of us felt like there is only one life, and if we can make this difference, why not? So we decided to nurture and mentor them.”
However, this decision was not free of its challenges.
“My husband’s friends said he was not man enough, they thought he couldn’t father children, and people thought I needed to see the gynaecologist. They could never understand that we made a choice to not have our own children.
“It is okay to have your own children, in fact, it is wonderful, but people in need also exist here. It is very easy for people in the church to say, okay, I’ll pray for you and go their way. But are you there when it matters the most, when it hurts the most?” she said, adding that she was happy her mother-in-law was supportive of their choice, even though Jasmine’s husband was the only son.
Fifteen years into their selfless work, Jasmine’s husband suddenly died of a heart attack, but she continued to support the children, who, by now, have entered university.
“I had this family, I could have chosen to walk away, but how can you walk away from your own.
“These are the children I cradled in my arms when they are crying, when they are distraught.
“So I became a single mom to 45 children, but I did not take in any more because I felt that though I am a mother figure, these kids needed a strong father figure.”
Alone, she celebrated her children’s graduations, weddings and the birth of her grandchildren. Today, her children are all around the country, some are doctors, lawyers and engineers. They would visit her at her home with their new families, sharing their life with her, tender moments that her husband was not there to experience.
“These children, they born of my heart, not of my womb. My story is just a different kind of story.” – The Vibes, April 18, 2021.
