The Bonding

She stood there with her hands folded over her tummy, a look of mingled surprise and delight on her face. Her hands moved of their own accord, probing, touching gently. Her belly felt flat and firm, but she knew, instinctively, that there was new life stirring within it. She was only two days overdue; logically, it could be argued that she was being hasty in arriving at this decision, but then, on the other hand, she was never late. No; her brow cleared, most definitely she was pregnant again. And, most definitely, it had to be kept a secret from her husband until it was too late to do anything about it.

She remembered the last time she was in a similar situation. His decision had been swift and final – we have to do something about it. And the very next day, he had fixed up a meeting with the gynaecologist. For some reason, the doctor insisted that she wait till she was two months pregnant, for him to do anything about it. It was such torment, such unspeakable despair, to carry that baby within her, knowing it was growing stronger by the day only to be slaughtered by one who had made it his life’s profession to save other lives. To be fair, the doctor had been understanding and sympathetic; the only person to have been kind to her since the nightmare started.

“Quite obviously, you are not prepared for an abortion. Then why are you going ahead with it?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Because we already have two children, and that’s a good enough reason to me,” responded her husband, bitingly.

“That’s all right, so many people have three children, and since you are already in this condition…” seeing the man’s implacability, and her beseeching, hopeful expression, the doctor’s voice trailed off as he looked back at her helplessly.

She opted for it to be performed under general anaesthesia. “This way, you will suffer more, you will be in the hospital for a longer time,” the doctor warned. “Do it the usual way, then I can discharge you on the same day.”

She met her husband’s gaze steadily and defiantly disregarded the warning glint in them.

“I don’t mind,” she said, flatly. “It will serve me right; after all, I am making an unborn, helpless baby suffer due to my inadequacies.”

She hated contraceptives that had to be inserted by a stranger and so never used them, and the pill of course, was not reliable enough. He hated condoms. While he never laid the onus on contraception on her as most other husbands did, when something like this happened – a miscalculation – abortion seemed too radical a solution to her and almost casual to him. What hurt her most is that they never really talked about it; he just clammed up and refused to discuss it any further, as though the decision was his alone to make.

And so here she was, at six o’clock in the morning, shivering in the thin, white hospital gown on a cold, December morning. They had woken her up at 5am, no tea – since she was to undergo a major procedure. No kind words – the ayahs looked at her with disdain; she was, after all, about to kill her child in a perfectly legal, socially acceptable manner!

They had shaved her belly and her pubic area, given her an enema – which has got to be the most undignified act one human can do to another – and had wound her hair up in tight plaits, securing them with a bandage around her head to prevent any wisps from escaping through. Nothing should get in the way – nothing, except for these damned emotions she had no control over.

The husband entered the room silently around 6.30, to find her staring with unseeing eyes out of the window. His heart gave a little lurch – she looked blank, lifeless, like someone ready to receive the death sentence in those frightful clothes. She looked at him dully; what was there to be said? But suddenly, the words came rushing out of him at seeing here there so defenceless, and the enormity of what he desired her to do struck him then. “Come,” he said hoarsely, and cleared his throat. “Let’s go home, let’s forget this madness, let’s take our baby home.”

Just for a second, something flickered in her dead eyes, before the shutters dropped again.

“It’s too late,” she said tonelessly. “You made me eat some medicine which was supposed to ensure a ‘natural abortion,’ remember? Nothing happened, but how do I know it didn’t affect the baby? I can’t bring a deformed child into the world and watch it suffer; far better to end it all now as planned.”

It wasn’t as though she had not tried. There was a good friend, who had since moved away to another locality, who had tried to persuade her she must have the baby. Laughingly, Neelam said: “Give it to me if you don’t want it.”

Eagerly, desperately, she had grasped at this straw. “Do you mean it?” she asked feverishly. “Will you really take the baby?” anything to keep it safe, keep it alive.

The woman moved away from the naked desperation, eyeing her as though she were mad. For her, it had been social chit-chat, nothing else, and thereafter, she took pains to avoid her till she eventually moved house.

She had been scheduled for the first surgery at 7 o’clock, a privilege accorded to her husband’s senior status – was that supposed to make it all better? As she entered the preparation room, the doctor came forward with a harried expression: “Would you mind if we took someone else first? There’s an emergency.”

She inclined her head and, for the first time, looked curiously at the woman next to her, now the first patient. A pretty, too-plump Nepali girl, the wife of a junior Army major, with eyes red and puffy from crying.

“Don’t cry,” the inane phrase was meant gently, but her voice came out all raspy.

“I don’t want this, please,” the woman whispered tremulously.

“Why are you here then?”

The woman bowed her head in shame and said softly: “Our first child is a daughter. This time, my husband made me go through a test, and it’s a girl again, so…”

The much-reviled girl child! She sat on her bed, swinging her legs aimlessly, impotent rage and frustration taking hold of her. ‘Is she worse off than I am, or are we just two sides of a coin?’

Soon enough, it was her turn; she looked at the doctor and said drearily: “What you did to her was wrong.” He watched her warily, anticipating hysterics, but she lay down quietly on the narrow table as they pushed the needle into her vein and swiftly, everything was merciful darkness.

She awoke blearily to an unfocussed room. Someone was slapping her face insistently; the slaps were stinging and she moaned in protest. It stopped immediately and she began to sink back into blessed oblivion, only to have them renewed forcefully. “Wake up, darling, please, fight the sleep, you’ve got to wake up,” she heard, and blinked into her husband’s anxious face. “Thank God,” he whispered. “They’ve gone to call the specialist; you’ve been unconscious the whole day!”

Her tongue felt thick. “Water,” she muttered.

“Not now, they said you’d have to wait,” he said, stroking back her hair.

“Water,” she repeated more strongly, and he gave her a few sips.

She had an overwhelming urge suddenly to go to the bathroom and asked him to help her. “Wait a minute, I don’t think you’re supposed to get up quite yet, let me get someone.” He returned with a nurse, who shoo-ed him out of the room. The nurse propped the girl’s unresisting legs on the bed and pushed them apart as she proceeded to pull out a bandage stuffed deep inside the vagina, simply reams and reams of the bloody, sodden stuff put there to absorb the bleeding, as the girl stifled cries of pain.

In some unfathomable way, this incident brought the husband and wife closer together. He genuinely wanted to make amends for his peremptory decision, moreover, in his own way he did love his wife and had not thought about the risk she was putting herself in. These things – abortions – had become so commonplace that no one paid much attention to the trauma it brought in its wake.

And now this! She curved her hands protectively over her stomach, and decided to go about as if nothing had happened. She would tell him later, much later.

But not quite as much later as she would have liked! He found out anyway. He sneaked up on her in the kitchen one morning as she was preparing breakfast, and wrapped her in a close embrace. “Mmm,” he said, nuzzling her ear, as the fresh smell of his aftershave wafted to her. “Someone’s been getting plump lately, and I haven’t noticed, eh?” She grew still in his arms, and terrible suspicion darkened his mind. He pulled back, holding her all the while, his arms ominously tight around her now as he scanned her face closely. “Is there something I should know here? I hope you’re not pregnant…are you? Oh God – not again!”

Well! He made it sound as though it were all her fault! She stood there warily, watching him, not saying a word.

“So I’m right then?” His mouth clamped shut, he whirled around and started to walk out the kitchen. “Forget breakfast, I’m going to get dressed. I’ll make an appointment with the doctor before going to the office. You’d better get changed too.”

“No!” the single word rang out in the room, shattering forever any warmth, any closeness they had managed to infuse tenuously into the relationship.

He checked his steps, came back, and thrust his face aggressively into hers.

“What. Did. You. Say?”

“No,” she repeated softly, strongly.

“No? What do you mean, ‘no?’ My God, I can’t believe you kept this from me – just when were you planning to tell me?”

She remained stubbornly silent and he exclaimed bitterly: “Oh, I get it now. You were waiting until it would be too late to do anything about it, right? Well, bad luck for you, now let’s get ready! Damn, it’s already 8.30.”

“Please,” she said. “Please, can’t we talk about it this time? Tonight, when you get home?”

“We can talk all right, but I can tell you right now I won’t change my mind. Okay, I’ll make the appointment for tomorrow.”

She went about the whole day as a nervous, mindless wreck. He was late getting home. When he did, he had a pre-occupied air; from the bundles of files, it was evidently going to be a long night, and she sighed with relief at the reprieve.

Two days later, he caught a viral infection, and the big decision was willy-nilly put off for some more time. But as soon as he started recovering, he was at her again, urging her to go to the doctor and fix a date.

Unknown to him, the tension and pressures had placed such a severe, emotional strain on her that she had begun spotting shortly after he fell sick. It had never happened before with the other children; frightened, and with no one to turn to, she kept quiet. It had started on the day he was admitted into hospital; embarrassed and terrified, she went to the nurse on duty for help. The nurse looked at her contemptuously, not knowing she was pregnant and thinking she had her periods: “God knows when you people will learn, why can’t you keep a track of your dates? This is a mens’ ward, don’t you know that?” she said, brusquely.

Worry gave her the strength to respond abruptly. “I DO know that, but I’m pregnant, and suddenly, I’m bleeding. Don’t you have some gauze or bandages here?”

The nurse eyed her speculatively. “In that case, you should go across to the gynaec word,” she said firmly.

“Look, please,” she sighed; why was everyone so difficult? “I can’t go there now, they’ll want to admit me. My husband is already a patient here and I have two small children at home. Just give me something and I’ll take care of myself.”

Now, days later – this. There was a sudden flow of blood; panicked, she ran out of the bathroom and lay on the bed. He came to see where she was, and rushed to her when he saw her crying.

“What’s it, what’s happened?”he asked in alarm.

“Hurry,” she gulped. “I’m bleeding, help me.”

“I’m going to call the doctor right now,” he declared.

“No,” she almost screamed in frustration and fear, and tried to control herself. “Help me, please,” she said, more quietly. “Put some pillows under my hips, raise the height. Please, I know what I’m saying,” she said desperately, afraid to move herself, as he still looked unconvinced.

He did what she asked and then phoned the doctor. She was babbling hysterically by then. “It’s all my fault, this is God’s way of punishing me for letting you talk of killing our baby. This is His way of punishing us for rejecting an unexpected gift. Oh God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she babbled incoherently, as the flow of blood continued.

He was weak and groggy himself from his recent sickness, and sounded panicked as he spoke to the doctor. “Keep her legs raised and give her a sedative to calm her down,” instructed the doctor. “But if the bleeding hasn’t stopped by the evening, I’m afraid you’ll have to bring her in,” he said, with a tone of finality.

She awoke, exhausted, around six o’clock, to find he had kept a steady vigil, even checking to see if she was still bleeding. He had been shaken up by the experience that had brought them to the brink of what he thought he wanted. But as she saw the genuine worry in his face, and as the flow of blood gradually ceased, she knew that they had turned a corner.

They hadn’t been out together for days, ever since this nightmare started, and planned an evening out once she was better. They went to Hyderabad’s Tank Bund area after putting the children to bed, with its carnival atmosphere of food kiosks, squealing children, indulgent parents, and cars whizzing madly by. Sitting on a bench overlooking the Hussain Sagar lake, where the mammoth Buddha statue lay encased in its scaffolding, they munched on chicken tikkas companionably while the stars twinkled and shone on the placid waters, and it was as if they had managed to turn the clock back. The magic seemed to get to him too; he sighed and took her hand in his.

“It’s not that I don’t want the child,” he said, quite overlooking the trauma he had put her through the past couple of months. “But I’m looking to the future as well; how will we manage to look after our children, give them all they want in life? Besides, what will people say – for me to have a baby at this age?”

It made her look at him disbelievingly; so, she was supposed to kill off another baby just because it wouldn’t make him look good?? She checked the impetuous, angry words and answered more tactfully. “We are not having the baby for other people, we are going to have it because we love it and want it. We have never had support from others. I will try and be more prudent, more economical, only, don’t ask me to do this. We should have been more careful – abortion is not the answer. If we were to keep a score card,” she said, finally letting bitterness spill over. “Then I have had more abortions than living children!”

He recoiled as if stung, and looked out over the still waters.

“Let’s do it this way,” she urged. “So far, you have only thought of it in terms of an abortion, of this baby being a burden. Give yourself a week to think of it positively, to think of having a baby in the house again. Think of all the people out there who long for children and can’t have them and here we are, so blessed – and you want to throw away the blessing as something unwanted. Think of it as ‘we can’ instead of ‘we can’t.’ I hope with all my heart,” and now her voice was firm. “I hope you can see it my way for this time, I will not be swayed to your point of view, even if it means that this is where we part ways.”

He looked at her swiftly, saw the unshed tears and the purpose in her eyes, and nodded. Saw that he had finally pushed her to the limits of her endurance. Silently, they got up and went home.

Neither of them referred to the topic for the next few days and then, one night, when she was distinctly beginning to show, he surprised her by leaning over her in bed and placing a hand over her tummy. “Goodnight, baby,” he said, and she knew they were home free.