Birth Pangs
A short story
Anjana Susarla
Amala paused on the threshold of her home, clutching her schoolbag and lunchbox, and trying to balance the model she had built for her science project.
Amma impatiently called out, “don’t forget, we have to go to Lakshmi Aunty’s son’s birthday function. I kept your purple frock for you to change into when you reach home.”
It was there again, that sound, a faint, insistent moan, something that barely registered on her conscious in the morning, fused between the news on the radio, the women jostling at the municipal tap, the hum of conversation from the people waiting in line at the milk booth, and the chanting of stotras from the neighbor’s morning pooja routine. Her parents privately made fun of this ritual and pointed out where the elderly lady mispronounced the Sanskrit syllables. For Amala, this was just part of the atonal disharmony that was the makeup of the street where they lived.
But as she stepped out of her home, the moan as it were was rising in pitch above the din of the streets during the relatively becalmed morning hour before the stampede of kids from the elementary school.
The narrow dusty street with the huge Siva Temple on one end and the revenue office on the other end was always full of noise and activity. The sounds from the Temple processions and political rallies mingled with the everyday cacophony from the prayers or the noisy schoolkids from the municipal elementary school ground, the peals of distant church bells, the flower sellers outside the temple market, and the vegetable hawkers were rhythmically punctuated by sounds of automobiles, rickshaws jostling, squabbles near the corner kirana store, the hubbub from nearby tea stall, and the vendors of street food.
Today they had tryouts in PT, which meant her canvas shoes had to be whitened. They were still a bit damp, but it would have to do. Amala’s preferred activity during PT class was to feign a stomachache so she could get away from the swarming playground and browse in the relatively deserted school library. Feigning stomachache during everyday class was one thing, but to fake illness in a school test was a more serious breach that Amala knew she would never even attempt.
“Amma, what is that sound? Sounds like someone is crying!”
Amma did not pay attention to her, absorbed in the newspaper.
“But Amma, it sounds like someone is crying!”
Amma looked up. “Must be one of the lads at the kirana and their endless bickering! Run along, child. Look, Sundari is here.”
Sundari was her classmate. The two girls were in the same school since they were three, the days when the kids, not much older than toodlers were supposed to take afternoon naps in the schoolroom. Walking to school together was a daily ritual.
Amala thought of mentioning the insistent sound of what seemed like someone crying, but Sundari had her Delhi cousins visiting. It seemed her cousins would be moving to their town. One of them, Rajeswari, would actually be in their class. Amidst this excitement and glamor of a new visitor in their life, all Amala’sobservations were forgotten and the girls barely registered when they reached school.
***
The cry sounded like a plaintive moan by the time Amala rushed back home from school in the late afternoon. Caught up in the activity for the upcoming science day, the sports trials, which despite her professed hate for all physical activity, Amala enjoyed and the hubbub over Sundari’s cousin, Amala forgot all about the crying in the morning. When she reached home, her mother’s friend, Sarojini, was in the sitting room. Sarojini Aunty was going to accompany them. Amala wanted to ask about the moan but felt more than a little mortified at the contrast between the cool and collected Sarojini Aunty, powdered and beflowered in her floating chiffon and her own bedraggled appearance with disheveled school uniform and unkempt hair. Amala wanted to rush inside and change at once, but Sarojini Aunty was full of solicitous inquiries about her classmates and school. Amma finally admonished both of them to stop talking and make sure Amala would get ready. Amala, abashed, submitted to Amma’s ministrations and obediently acquiesced to wearing the purple frock with enamel hairclips to match.
Lakshmi Aunty was her mother’s colleague, who stopped working when she married into a rich family. She now lived in a large bungalow which Amala noticed with amazement even had a small lily pond with a fountain. The prosperity was visible everywhere in the old furniture, though old school enough not to be brash. The large living room was tinkling with the bangles, and the jasmine in the women’s hair and rosewater in silver sprinklers added their layers of fragrance to the delicious smells wafting from the kitchen. Normally, Amala hated being dragged to social occasions but in the wonder of the large house and gardens with fragrant roses, malathi and pogada flower creepers along the walls and the bough of trumpet vines, Amala was stilled.
With a shock Amala realized that the moan had cascaded into screaming by the time they were back. This time, the adults looked more than a little concerned themselves. Sarojini Aunty was going to stay with them overnight, and Doctor Aunty dropped by.
“Shocking, not taking the poor thing to a doctor!”
“I told them at the last checkup that she would need weekly checkups in her final trimester. If they didn’t want to pay my fees, I said I would recommend my friend Nirmala at the government hospital!” Doctor Aunty’s voice rose with indignation. “The poor orphan! All the family wanted to do was wash their hands off her to the first available groom and Malathi is struggling in childbirth.”
Malathi! The name gave her a jolt of recognition. Ever since she was a child, Amala remembered Malathi. In her earliest memories, Malathi used to be rushing between the home of her grandmother and her aunt, always clutching a tiffin carrier or a steel box. When playing with her doll kitchen utensils, Amala would pick up a tiny steel container and hold one of her dolls and mimic Malathi’s rushing movements. Amala never understood why these copious exchanges of food were such everyday occurrences and Malathi always seemed to be rushed off her feet. Amala dimly remembered Malathi was married some years ago and moved to another town where her husband lived. They seemed to have missed the actual event, given it took place in the summer, when Amala’s family was always busy with travel and family visits.
It was somehow unspoken that they did not much socialize with the people who lived on the street where they lived. Amala’s parents were better educated and most of their friends lived in the better part of town with tree lined streets, wide roads, and spacious parks. Amala’s mother was quick to point out they were only renting this place as it was walking distance to her workplace and kids’ schools, and it was a pity they had to live here and not in their own home which was rented out, being too far for her work. This street was part of the old town, where most people owned businesses, who Amala’s grandmother dismissively characterized as tradespeople. Living in the cramped and narrow streets, Amala never questioned how they lived next door to people they barely talked to. This seemed part of the invisible social code that governed their lives, and they were never supposed to evince much interest in what happened to their neighbors.
Malathi was an orphan who lived with her uncle’s family. The crumbling old home housed Malathi’s grandmother, her uncle’s family, a spinster aunt who gave singing lessons. Malathi’s married aunt lived around the corner in an old but more prosperous looking home. Malathi’s mother died and Malathi was sent to live with her mother’s family. An air of sorrow and despair seemed to cling over the house, whether it was because of the sister’s death or the generally rumored decaying family finances, Amala did not know. The home was known in the neighborhood as “Vanajamma teacher’s house” because of the lady, Vanaja who gave singing lessons. With a shock, Amala realized that the pregnant woman, her body stooped by the weight of the child she was carrying, that she saw on the courtyard the other day must have been Malathi.
Doctor Aunty’s practice was a sitting room and a small surgery room. This was not the future she wanted for herself, Doctor Aunty would say. Yet, when she became a mother, and with the constraints of her own family, it seemed better to run her own practice and keep her own hours. Amala could only dimly understand the conversation around her, but it appeared Malathi was in childbirth and her family wanted her to have a homebirth, without a doctor visit.
The three women seemed disturbed and were passionately discussing maternal care. Between the conversation and her excitement all day, Amala fell asleep despite the unceasing screams and the frustration from the three women.
**
When Amala woke up next morning, it was like the screams were never there. Without her asking, Amma said, “so they finally took the poor child to the general hospital! Better late than never!”
The morning floated by in a rush. Amma sent Jogarao, her lab attendant, over to Subbaih’s for pesarattu upma since they had a visitor staying with them. Amala was deputed to help with setting out the breakfast, and the murmurs of the women mingled with the excitement of ordering in an elaborate breakfast on a weekday.
Malathi was going to be alright, thought Amala. Though, strictly speaking, Amala did not exchange any remarks beyond a perfunctory “bagunnava (how are you?)” to Malathi, Amala remembered what a bright smile Malathi would have when she saw Amala and Sundari returning from nursery school. It was reassuring to think Malathi would be admitted to a hospital, the way women in her family had always done. On the way to school, she reported her observations about Lakshmi Aunty’s home to Sundari, who had apparently visited it herself not too long ago.
*****
Amala did not think much about Malathi the next couple of days. Amidst her impending tests and science day, and Sundari’s cousin Rajeswari, who turned out to be a wise city child with many observations of her own, her own thoughts and preoccupations did not amount to much. The girls in Amala’s class scrambled to make friends with the newcomer and recruit her into their own cliques. Amala submitted to the implicit social order, like she always did, and found herself in the popular group with Sundari and her cousin. Apparently being friends with Sundari from nursery school conferred her an advantage in the social hierarchy.
It was only on the third day, Amala remembered that Malathi should have been home by now. “Amma, how is Malathi’s baby?” she shouted as she skipped back from school.A shadow darkened Amma’s brow.
“The child did not survive,” Amma said. “The mother is doing fine, thank God.”
“But..”Amala began. The sentence was not formed in her head.
“Do your maths homework, Amala. You seem to be completely engrossed with Rajeswari and the popular girls!” reprimanded Amma. So Amma had noticed after all.
Amala felt an unspeakable sorrow. She bent over her math but could not reconcile in her own mind the two different Malathis -a young woman in unbearable pain, having lost what she hoped would be her first child in childbirth, with the joyful teenager she remembered flitting between homes.
Amma pressed her women’s association members into action, and they and Doctor Aunty would offer medical resources and help to the grieving family of Malathi.
For the next few days, Amala avoided walking past Vanajamma teacher’s home. She avoided asking about Malathi. Mornings she would leave earlier and go to Sundari’s home, and they would walk to school together.
A week after Malathi was rushed to the hospital, Amala stepped out onto the courtyard at dawn. She had woken up earlier than usual, and liked watching the street transform from its pre-dawn haze to the hurdy-gurdy of the morning bustle. At this early hour, some of the women who lived on this street, or their maids for women like her mother, would be sprinkling the dusty thresholds with water and ornamenting it with muggu.
There was a woman on the opposite side of the street drawing a muggu. It was Malathi. Except Malathi was not crying or grief struck in any way that Amala could understand.
She finished the muggu, stopped to exchange remarks with a neighbor on her side of the street, then calmly picked up the muggu can and broom and stepped inside. Amala half expected Malathi to shortly emerge holding a tiffin carrier and set out to her Aunt’s place.
For many days after, Amala could not shake the image off. In her young mind, she could not fathom what she was seeing, and how Malathi was able to go on with her life.
It was only many years later, taking care of her own children, she would reflect on what strength and grace it took for the young woman to cope with an unthinkable loss.
Author’s Notes:
This was based on something I witnessed myself as a child. I tried to write from a small child’s vantage point and based on my recollection of events. As a child, it was hard to connect the pieces, and it took me a couple of days to understand this was someone going through childbirth. It took me even longer to understand that the child did not survive and that the mother had the immensely heartbreaking experience of surviving a stillborn child. Its only now with hindsight and from life experience, I understand the lack of adequate care to the young woman and that millions of women worldwide go through childbirth without the benefit of trained medical help.
