Disclaimer: I do not own the Disney Channel TV series, JESSIE.

Author's Note: Hello there, fellow viewers and fanfiction writers of JESSIE. I am a college student in my freshman year, and I have been feeling motivated to write some JESSIE fanfiction, especially with the show in its fourth and final season… I have a few things planned for Ravi especially – he's my favorite character. I will explain it all in my author's note at the end of the story.

This first story of mine is a little glimpse into Ravi's adoption into the Ross family, from his point of view. Now, I've done many hours of research on orphanages and orphaned children in India, I've read several stories from real parents of adopted Indian children, and I have studied the adoption process of Indian children—all of which has been really helpful in the planning and writing of Ravi's story.

The story had taken a slightly different direction than from what I'd originally planned in the plotting process, but I am mostly satisfied with it. Sort of, ish. Actually, I'm not that satisfied with how it turned out…

But I hope you all enjoy it anyway. Now, onto the story.

Home

Three years ago, I didn't live in the hustle and bustle of New York City.

I wasn't growing up in a multi-million dollar penthouse, overlooking the streets of Manhattan's Upper West Side. My parents weren't the famous Morgan and Christina Ross, and I didn't have a brother, two sisters, or a butler and a nanny.

Three years ago, I did not have my own room. I never got chemistry sets for my birthday, nor did I get into crazy situations with siblings on a daily basis. And I certainly did not get $2,000 for allowance, a giant trust fund, or get to spend summer vacations on a private island.

Three years ago, I was growing up in an orphanage on the rural outskirts of Calcutta, India.

~*~O~*~

I was ended up in the orphanage when I was four years old.

I lost my birth mother, Padma, to a vehicle accident on the streets of Calcutta. My father had long since abandoned my mother and me, a month after I was born. I was temporarily placed in the care of a neighbor of my mother during the span of time before I was sent to the orphanage. The only things I had with me were a small bag of clothes, and an old, faded photograph of my mother.

Every night for six years, I slept in a large room with bunk beds all lined up along the walls, surrounded by more than a dozen other boys. Some were the same age as me, while others were either a little younger or a little older than me.

At mealtimes, I ate in a large dining hall with all of the children in the orphanage (except the infants; they were fed in the nursery). There were caregivers who took care us children, many of who assumed the roles of big brothers and sisters.

I went to school like most ordinary kids. School hours made up some of Ravi's favorite parts of his days. Run by a group of monks, the orphanage school was a small building with small classrooms and crowded desks. It was where I learned to write, read, and speak English (and Hindi).

Between meals and school hours, I could either be found playing with other kids in the courtyard, or curled up with a book in the orphanage library. I liked reading books about different kinds of animals in the world – especially reptiles.

(My readings on reptiles would come in handy when he befriended Mr. Kipling – the Asian water monitor lizard whose egg I would find at the edge of a small swamp near the orphanage – that's a story for another time.)

~*~O~*~

I was nine, two weeks shy my tenth birthday, when I was told there was a family from America that wanted to adopt me.

I wasn't told too many details about them. But what I did learn about them was: they were a family with a lot of money, three kids (two of which were also adopted), and the parents were a celebrity couple named Morgan and Christina Ross.

The family lived in a place called New York City.

And they wanted me.

For nearly six years, adoption seemed more like, a dream than a real possibility, especially for an older child – a child older than six years of age. It was not so often that an older child would be adopted from the orphanage. Infants and toddlers were the ones that adopting parents wanted. Every few months, children years younger than me found themselves in the loving, waiting arms of their new mommy or daddy, and leave the orphanage to discover a new forever home.

Now it was my turn…

After saying yes to adoption by the Ross family – because being an older child allowed me to choose for myself – I met Morgan and Christina Ross three and a half weeks later, in an office where adoptions were made official.

The next five days were a bit of a blur.

The day after our first meeting, Morgan and Christina returned to the orphanage around nine o'clock to pick me up outside the same office as the day before. Several caregivers I knew from over the years came by to say goodbye to me. All the women, some with tears in their eyes, hugged me so hard that I was afraid my ribs would crack. The orphanage director, whom I'd never talked to before, shook my hand and wished me good luck.

Before leaving for America, there was a visit to be made to the city of New Delhi. It was a two hour flight from Calcutta. My very first plane ride was in the private jet that Morgan and Christina had hired for their trip to India to pick me up. In New Delhi, I went through a medical exam to check that I was healthy, and Morgan and Christina acquired a travel visa for me. With the visa, I would be granted passage into America upon arrival at the JFK Airport in New York City.

Also, a visit was paid to a veterinarian for Mr. Kipling – the one thing I chose to bring with me to America, besides the old photograph of my birth mother – to check that my lizard was fit for traveling overseas.

After that three day stay in New Delhi, Morgan and Christina, or Mr. Daddy and Mrs. Mommy, as I began calling them, surprised me with a quick stop at Agra, to see the Taj Mahal.

It was early in the morning when we left India. As the plane ascended into the pink-and-gold sky, I gazed out the window, pressing my nose against the glass as I made a silent farewell to my homeland.

~*~O~*~

Just like any other Saturday afternoon, the streets of Manhattan were teeming with the usual hustle and bustle of the Upper West Side.

The mid-October weather was pleasantly sunny and mild in comparison to the chillier afternoons of the past week and a half. Pools of warm sunlight splashed across the city sidewalk as a pair of sandal-clad, sock-wearing feet – belonging to a thirteen-year-old Ravi Ross – walked over smooth cement. Fallen leaves, all yellow ones, crunched beneath the bottoms of his sandals as he stepped over them, and a light wind was gently playing with his hair.

All around Ravi, there was something happening.

The cars, taxis, and buses on the city road were humming as they waited for a crowd of pedestrians to cross the street. There was a little bit of honking, too, from the more impatient drivers. Birds were searching for bits of food on the ground. There were street vendors selling iPhone cases, t-shirts, and soft pretzels. The air was thick with the jumble of several conversations of the people around him.

And, not to mention the faint and highly unpleasant smell that reminded Ravi of a pile of his brother's dirty socks …

It was New York City, all right.

Three years ago, he was a ten-year-old boy from an orphanage in India, seeing the large city for the first time with curious eyes and a huge smile on his face. He wanted to explore every corner and learn everything about the city. Even after three years of familiarizing himself with the streets of Manhattan, there was still something about walking around the city that filled the thirteen-year-old with the same fascination and delight that he'd felt when he was ten and new to the city…

Sometimes, he learned, New York City was called "The Big Apple". Or, "The City That Never Sleeps".

Ravi – for three years now – called it home.

Author's Note: Well, that's the end of it. My first JESSIE story (and certainly not the last). Now, like I said before, I'm not a complete, 100% satisfied with how the story turned out But I hope you all thought it was somewhat…decent. I've been trying to write it for over a month. i just wanted to get the story out before the airing of "Karate Kid-Tastrophe" and "Basket Cases" later this week. I got desperate…

My one regret is that I did not think writing this sort of story a long time ago, like before JESSIE entered its fourth season. I've been watching JESSIE since it started in 2011, and never once thought to write any fanfiction for my second favorite Disney Channel show (after Good Luck Charlie). I've tried to write for other DC shows in the past (Shake It Up, Austin and Ally…) and I gave up on those attempts when it didn't work out. This time, though, I am determined to finish what I start…

Now, moving onto the topic of future JESSIE stories… So far, I've planned two projects for the character of Ravi. One of them is a series of reflections of every JESSIE episode that has aired from Ravi's perspective, with character studies and some missing scenes, titled, "Musings of an Indian Boy". The other project will be a compilation of drabbles and vignettes and short stories all centered on, you guessed it, Ravi. You will be seeing both of them soon…