Invisible Ink by Neelum Saran Gour

Author:Neelum Saran Gour
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Collins
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

8

By now Amma was like an elephant. She walked with her head thrown back, her great belly leading the way. Her belly became a worktable for her and she rested her embroidery on it and worked with slow, swollen fingers. Even her face had puffed up and her feet were like huge loaves. She was having a difficult time, but she was happy. Sometimes, a tiny conical projection appeared on one side of her belly, then on another, then below, and it seemed to bring her much delight.

‘There he goes, the badmash!’ she chuckled. ‘Never at rest. Always jumping around.’

I watched the disturbance in her belly with interest. For an hour each day, she read the Veer-katha-sangraha, which held stories of gods and saints and kings and heroes.

‘Did you read this book when I was inside you?’ I wanted to know.

‘I did,’ she answered. ‘Everyone told me you were going to be a boy.’

‘Did I kick like this?’

‘Much more than this,’ she assured me.

One afternoon, dragging a bucket across the courtyard, she stopped and gasped and let out a low cry. Her rubber slippers were streaked with blood. It seemed to be snaking down her legs in a long, thin trail. She clutched her belly, moved to the charpai and collapsed onto it.

‘Call Mira Chachi quickly!’ she hissed. ‘Call Ram Sumer, the rickshaw-wallah. Call Akhtari Apa and Shehnaz Baji and Saima, hurry!’

In just a few minutes, our courtyard was buzzing with action. Our neighbours hastily sprang to the rescue. The rickshaw was called, Amma bundled into it, baskets packed, water casks filled, cupboards rummaged for clothes to take along, food arrangements for the hospital made and instructions shouted at me. Amma drove away to the Dufferin Hospital with Mira Chachi from next lane and, following in another rickshaw, Amina’s mother, Shehnaz Baji and Saima. It was happening. The baby boy was coming, this I understood.

But I was totally unprepared for what would happen early the next morning as I lay curled up on my small string cot, which I had put in the landing outside Mehru Apa’s room. It felt good with all the gods around and Mehru Apa on the other side of the door. I awoke to a moist feeling in my cotton knickers, much like the one I used to have long ago on winter nights when I wet my bed. Nothing can describe my horror. There was blood. Coming out of me, quite plainly. No mistake about it. It was blood, a brownish treacle, smudging my thighs, not bright like the kind streaking out of my mother, but muddy-old, like the stain of a rusty knife. What was this? I was having a baby too!

Panic seized me. There wasn’t a soul in the house – except Mehru Apa, locked away in her room. I blundered out of bed and up to her door. I huddled against her door, sniffling, gulping down terrified sobs.

She must have been awake. The door opened at once.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

She could make nothing of my garbled account.

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