India's Broken Tryst by Tavleen Singh

Author:Tavleen Singh [Singh, Tavleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers India
Published: 2016-04-11T18:30:00+00:00

18

SUREKHA’S BABIES

S

urekha got pregnant within months of getting married. I learned that she was pregnant after finding out that she had got married. Marriages for people who live on the footpaths of Mumbai are not celebrated, just as deaths are not mourned. Grinding, relentless poverty makes such ceremonies unaffordable. So one day the child Surekha that I had known since she was a girl of ten was Surekha the married lady. She seemed to love the accoutrements of being married and took instantly to wearing earrings and necklaces and anklets on her feet. And she loved wearing shiny saris like a newly married lady.

Surekha’s first son was born in a rundown government hospital. He did not live for more than a few hours. The doctors later said that the baby was born with a genetic defect. Surekha said she had seen him alive and that he seemed perfectly healthy to her. She blamed the doctors for killing him and when she got pregnant again barely nine months later asked if I could pay for her to go to a private hospital this time. She had already found a gynaecologist in Bombay Hospital but could not afford to pay for the baby to be delivered there.

When I asked her if she had told the doctor that her first baby was born with a genetic blood disease, she said that she had not because it was not true. ‘It was the fault of the doctors,’ she said. ‘The baby was fine. I know he was fine because I saw him and even fed him. There was nothing wrong with him.’

‘But the doctor should be told. If you are not going to then I will. Give me her number.’

‘All right,’ she said reluctantly, ‘but I don’t want her to think there is anything wrong with me or the baby.’

‘I will make sure.’

So I called the doctor. She was a nice woman who was sympathetic when I explained in detail the conditions in which Surekha lived and how she had already lost a son just the year before. She said she had examined Surekha and was sure that there was nothing wrong with the baby but Surekha was anaemic and needed some tonics. We bought these and I tried to make sure that Surekha ate well during her pregnancy. When the time came for the baby to be born there were no beds available in the general ward of Bombay Hospital, so I paid for her to be in a private room.

The nurses on duty in the private ward gawped when they saw that one of their patients was a woman who lived ‘on the footpath’, and when they kept asking her about this it impressed me that Surekha handled their questions with dignity. ‘So where do you live?’ they asked with prurient curiosity over and over again.

‘On the footpath,’ she said firmly.

‘But what do you mean by that…do you mean you really live on the footpath?’

‘Yes. I live on the footpath.’

‘And your family?’

‘They live on the footpath too.

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