Home (5 page)

III

Birth

Two months later Sona discovered she had conceived.

‘Maybe it will be your turn next,’ was how she broke the news to her sister.

Rupa received the information stoically. Her mind leaped to the little baby in her sister’s arms, to the loneliness that would be hers as the only childless woman in the family. But then Rupa was also fair. She had not suffered like her sister, nor had she fasted and done penance. With only initial difficulty, she smiled and hugged Sona, whispering that not for nothing had she prayed, and looked after Vicky so selflessly. God was rewarding her.

‘I feel it is because of the Devi,’ went on Sona, not wanting to take credit for her pregnancy. ‘I felt a change after we went, didn’t you?’

Yes, Rupa had. She was now supplying pickles and sweet chutneys to local restaurants as well as shops, and had hired a woman to help her. She wished to purchase a car, she wished to go on more holidays, above all she wished she had enough money to buy out the tenant who was causing her husband and father-in-law so much tension. More than an elusive baby, Rupa focused her attention on financial success.

‘We must go again, our trip has been very auspicious,’ she now said.

‘Your Jijaji can’t be travelling all the time,’ said Sona tartly. Really, her sister must learn to be a little more independent, and not be taking her brother-in-law’s generosity for granted.

A storm rose in Rupa’s heart. This was the kind of woman her sister was: cry on her shoulder incessantly, and the minute things improved, she turned her back. Always she had been like that, getting her way in everything because she was pretty. If Sona wasn’t her only relative in the city, she would never bother with her again.

‘See what
he
gave me, when I told him,’ said Sona now, going to her Godrej almirah, unhooking the keys that hung from her waist. ‘Even though I said I didn’t want –
he
insisted,’ and flushing with pleasure, she handed her sister a long, red velvet box.

‘He is so good to you, Didi,’ sighed Rupa, removing the hostility from her mind when she saw her sister take out in addition an almost new silk sari, divining it to be for herself. In the general happiness she too must have her share.

She opened the velvet box carefully. There lay not only a gold filigree necklace but matching dangling earrings. How had Yashpal managed to buy a necklace for his wife, and that too for no recognised occasion, without having to buy one for every other woman in the family? Was Sona’s pregnancy going to divide them? Had Yashpal Bhai Sahib gone mad for love of his wife?

‘Don’t be silly,’ giggled Sona when she asked. ‘It’s just one little necklace.’

‘Not so little,’ said Rupa, taking it out of the box to calculate its heaviness. ‘Must be thirty grams at least.’

‘Thirty-five.’

Worse and worse, thought Rupa, while Sona held the necklace against her sister’s neck in order to admire it more.

‘Does your father-in-law know?’ she persisted.

‘How do I know?’ pouted Sona. ‘Really, Roop, how can you grudge me a bit of jewellery after all these years?’

Rupa gasped and shut up. If the Banwari Lals were going to be divided over one necklace, it would not be for lack of warning.

But she noticed that Sona never wore the necklace publicly. It remained a private thing hidden by husband and wife.

A pregnancy after ten years in a woman almost thirty had to be guarded, protected, and encouraged. The elders decreed that Sona should not be allowed to deliver at her mother’s, as was the custom. God knew what facilities those people would provide – they were not well off, it’s better to do everything here.

The next seven months were momentous ones. Sona’s diet, her rest, her activities were treated with the greatest of care. Vitamins, minerals, iron supplements, almonds, butter, and milk were showered on her. Her body grew heavy with the weight of two; her round face became rounder and shone like the moon.

She was never allowed to go alone and friendless for her check-ups. Always there was Sushila and the mother-in-law, asking questions, carefully holding Sona’s medical file, meticulously inserting the test reports.

‘What does Maji say to you now?’ asked Rupa once.

‘Oh, she has completely changed. She doesn’t even let me bend to pick up anything,’ giggled Sona.

‘That’s very convenient,’ remarked Rupa, ‘to change from poison to honey just like that.’

‘Oh, she wanted a grandchild. It is understandable,’ replied Sona, taking two glasses of tea from the boy who had been recently hired to help in the house.

‘But that is hardly fair to
you
,’ flashed Rupa, who after all had been the repository of everything Maji had said through the years, and could neither forgive nor forget so easily.

‘It is the way of the world,’ said Sona, speaking across a divide Rupa had never felt before.

One day, two days overdue, waters burst but no contractions, and Sona was rushed to the hospital. She was put on the drip to induce labour, while the family waited patiently, knowing this would take time.

How often had Sona waited in similar situations. Now it was her turn to be waited for. Let her take her time, let it be as long and as difficult as possible, Sushila, Maji, Rupa, their husbands, all were prepared.

Morally, mentally, emotionally, financially, domestically. One amongst them was dispatched when it was time for the children to come home from school. One received the men in the evening when they came home from the shop. Yashpal himself was shadowed constantly, he could not be left unsupported for even a second.

The waiting period grew tense as it became clear that Sona was not responding to the drip. Even after fifteen hours she had not dilated beyond six centimetres. Rupa sat with Sona throughout, holding her hand, pressing her cold feet, giving her little sips of iced water, wiping her forehead, and listening to her groans.

Finally the doctor said what everybody had suspected all along, but nature had to be given a chance. ‘The baby’s heartbeat is recording stress. Sign here for a Caesarean.’

Yashpal signed.

A girl was born.

Commented the doctor as she finished with her injection, polio drops, and silver nitrate: ‘Nowadays what’s the difference, boy or girl?’

The nurse added, ‘She will bring great wealth to her family, be its goddess Lakshmi.’ Nurses know which way the wind is blowing. In a birthing room longings and disappointments are palpable, and dealt with in a routine way.

‘Such a sweet little baby,’ said Rupa dutifully, while Sushila was making sure that the new-born was wrapped in the soft old clothes that had been kept ready.

‘It is good to have a girl in the house,’ replied Sushila as Sona dozed. ‘The brothers will have a sister.’

‘Indeed,’ said Rupa guardedly. Sushila was the enemy, she was well aware of that, but her experience of Sushila had been drawn from the thousands of words expended on her, hour after hour, year after year. Alone with her, she felt uneasy and unprepared.

‘Now I can tell you how worried we were that something would go wrong. With Sona’s history, you know.’

Rupa bridled. ‘I believe there were no serious complications. She may have taken a long time conceiving, but in the end it was all right.’

‘Such care we took, of course it would be all right. We protected your sister from every possible shock.’

‘What shock?’

‘We knew. We asked the doctor after the ultrasound – girl or boy? She told us confidentially. She’s my old doctor, and she knows we are not the type to abort a female foetus. That is why we kept telling Sona the main thing is the child should be healthy. Isn’t that so?’ she cooed at the baby, before the nurse took her away.

‘Lakshmi will follow her into the house,’ rallied Rupa, disconcerted by this information.

‘Of course,’ agreed Sushila.

‘And now the womb has opened,’ continued Rupa, ‘a baby brother will come.’

‘It is all in the hands of God. Our house is blessed with sons, do not worry about that,’ remarked Sushila.

Rupa was uncertain of what to say, wanting to assert her sister’s right to her own son, but not wanting to imply that one son was not as good as another in the Banwari Lal eye. She remained silent.

Births and deaths bring their own pollution. For ten days no god figure could be touched, no meals cooked, no fire lit. Food was provided by the relatives of the daughters-in-law, unaffected by the increase or decrease in the members of the Banwari Lal household.

‘Will you be able to feed so many?’ whispered the new mother to her sister. ‘Take the keys to my cupboard, there is some money there.’

‘Didi, why do you worry so much? Your milk will dry up. I keep telling you I will manage. This is my business, have you forgotten?’

‘Still, they are used to nice things.’

‘I am quite able to produce nice things for the Banwari Lal family. It is not as though their diet has been holy nectar.’

Why did Sona always think that her own side would be found wanting? For years they had steadily consumed and praised the pickles, chutneys, and packaged savouries she freely supplied them. Now when she had to turn out a few meals, Sona was pushing the cupboard keys at her. She had seen enough of the in-laws over the past few days to know they did not expect a five-star banquet. Maybe it was the birth of a girl that pumped the insecurity in her sister’s nature into the food she was going to provide.

Rupa returned to her house thoughtful. There was more to Sona’s life than she had previously realised. There had been so much family feeling at the nursing home, everybody pitching in to take care of things. What did she have in her home besides one husband and one old father-in-law? Nothing, and with a dry and barren womb there would continue to be nothing. She sighed, and gave her karma a gloomy thought before concentrating on the provisions that needed to be bought for tomorrow.

‘Maybe I too will now get,’ she remarked at random to her husband the next day, as they were packing the food in tiffin carriers and cardboard boxes. ‘After ten years is quite something. Anything can happen.’

‘Maybe,’ he said slowly. ‘But things are all right the way they are.’

‘If we have children, they will look after us in our old age.’

‘Who knows how children will turn out?’

‘Still, it is nice. Didi has so many people to care for her. Always someone there, never lonely.’

‘With more people there is more tension also. In your sister’s family, remarks travel from down to up, up to down all day. And then she cries to you.’

‘That could be Didi, you know, used to feeling bad. Perhaps they mean well. See how nice they were about the baby.’

‘With three boys in the house, you think they are being especially nice if they have a girl? We are better the way we are – no giving, no taking, everything neat and clean.’

He was trying to console her. Her husband was a decent man, never throwing her barrenness in her face. Maybe she should also fast and pray like her sister. But she had always loved eating, and her husband loved to eat with her.

‘Now only I will be left,’ she remarked sadly, as she poured some chutney into a steel container.

‘What can one do?’ asked her husband, this time also sounding sad. It must have been difficult for him to see Sona getting a baby, and nothing from her, thought Rupa.

Now everything was going to change. Sona would be swallowed into that family, she could see it already. There would be no more hints of barrenness. If they were really keen about a son, with their money they could go on producing till they finally got one. Her own role in her sister’s life would become limited. She hoped Yashpal would go on helping her, neither she nor her husband had the contacts to do outside liaising. And Vicky, what was going to happen to Vicky?

After a week Sona and her daughter came home. Relatives and friends, having done the hospital round, now did the home round. Among women, details of the Caesarean were canvassed, the drip, the labour, the baby’s heartbeat, the decision, the operation, the pain, the stitches, the necessity of care, healing, and prolonged rest.

And the baby, they cooed, tea in one hand, plates of sweet and savoury in the other – look at the baby, look at her colour, she looks like her father, her mother, her grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, even the odd cousin (from which side depended on the speaker). And again her colour so clean, ah yes, so necessary these black threads around her wrist and ankle, the kaajal smudged on her forehead to make her ugly and keep away the evil eye.

The baby’s horoscope was cast: the configuration of the planets at her birth made her a mangli. This was not good news, manglis were horribly difficult to marry off. Unless they found a man with similarly unfortunate stars unhappiness or death was the sure result.

Yashpal said he did not believe in such nonsense, there were manglis in this world who led perfectly decent lives. He had to be reminded that Sunita had been a mangli. Though she had been married off with Babaji himself matching the horoscopes, look what happened to her.

Lala Banwari Lal felt so protective towards his baby granddaughter that he actually declared it was not necessary for girls to marry. Sona silently hoped the family would not blame her too much for a mangli girl. Rupa thought that maybe her sister might still have problems she could share with no one but her. Sushila smiled and dandled the baby lovingly, such a pretty little thing, it took her back to when her children were born.

They did the naming ceremony on the fortieth day. The auspicious letter taken out was ‘a’. For the horoscope the pundit chose the long and old-fashioned Anandalakshmi, which no one would use, the name that would confuse the evil eye and deflect ill from the person. Her everyday name would be Nisha, short, sweet, with a modern ring to it.

The grandfather decided to celebrate on the scale reserved for sons. Yashpal should not feel that more money was being spent on Pyare Lal’s children than on his own. Everybody remotely related was called. All a baby could need was displayed in the drawing room. There was a pram, cotton sets for summer, little sweater sets in pastel colours for winter, sets of silver glasses, cups, spoons, and rattles, little brush and comb sets, dolls, a doll’s house, gold bangles for baby wrists, gold chains that hung around her neck and reached her knees.