Of Birth and Scars

Titin did not grow up on women's voices. Rather, her growing up was enveloped by male voices. Voices trying to tell the stories of a periphery. Voices trying to change the stories of a periphery. Defeated voices. Betrayed voices. Resilient voices. Voices trying to argue. Voices trying to talk back. Yes, there were women's voices too. The voices which occasionally tried to peep in. To talk. To talk back. To shout. But the truth of the matter is, Titin grew up on men's voices. Something that will change her for ever. Something that will determine how she will talk. How she will carry her body around. But, then, the few occasional female voices which would try to acquire spaces within a much stronger chorus of male voices will form her too. It is like them that she became. It is their struggle that she inherited. She wouldn't realize, until much later in her life, that the way she walks strangely resembles the way Krishna Mashi carried her feet. The way she laughed resembled exactly the way Babli Pishi threw back her head and laughed what everyone thought was her un-feminine noisy laughter. And obviously, even though her entire life she would struggle not to become like her Ma,during those strange moments of having an argument with her boyfriends, she would notice, she is modulating her voice exactly the way her Ma did. Even though Titin grew up on men's voices, it's like the women she became. For she inherited their struggles.
Titin's Ma,Rekha, had always said, that she and Anil, her husband were very happy when Titin was born. Especially Anil. Rekha said to Titin, at least sixteen thousand one hundred and twenty nine times, that Anil distributed sweets after Titin was born. Titin had to admit that that wasn't exactly the commonest thing to do. Especially for the father of a newborn girl. As for a newborn boy, that's an all-together different story. Anil, on his part, has never said anything to Titin. What's his version of the story, Titin often wondered. Neither did he ever confide to her his version of her birth story. Did he have one? Titin wanted to know. For example, how did he come to know that Rekha was pregnant? How did he react at the news of his impending fatherhood? Men, after all, are not supposed to talk.
Rekha,on the other hand, loved to tell her daughter's birth story. Titin's birth story. Or, rather stories. Except for one. Rekha never told Titin that she wasn't planned. That she was an "accident. Years later, as a budding folklorist obsessed with family folklore, Titin will find out, from broken conversations and yellow-paged letters that Anil's friends shared a joke about her birth. The joke was that Anil had used a paper bag, a thonga instead of the real thing. Titin never got to the part about the joke her mother might have shared with her friends. Because, her mother didn't have any. Yes, Titin had heard stories about her childhood friends. Her schooldays in a small town in Southern Bengal. Her college days in a girls' college in Kolkata. When she met Anil. Her days as a Masters' student in Calcutta University. College Street campus. Activist days. ABSF”All Bengal Students' Federation.1964”the divided Communist Party.1967”yet another division. Naxalbari”the supposed decade of liberation. The "Woman Question, at least the way Titin understands it, somehow, did not become a huge part of this backdrop. Rekha had comrades”male comrades. None of them, except for one, became her friend. And the one, who did become her friend, was Anil. The man she decided to live with. The man, who became her daughter's father. Titin's father. Yes, she could talk to her comrades for hours. Laugh with them. Go out for a film, or a play or a day at the book fair. But they remained her comrades. To them, she was a friend's wife. And remained a friend's wife. At best, she was a comrade, a woman-comrade at that. But never a friend.
Rekha loved to tell Titin's birthstory. How she was born. How she became her daughter”at last. Although the story was rarely directed at Titin. Most often, it was told in the presence of other women. Female relatives. Titin's aunts who have gathered together for a wedding. Or a funeral feast. The after-lunch gathering when women would huddle together in a bed. Before they begin to dress up for the evening. Before the guests would begin to arrive. Somehow, all through her childhood, Titin had felt, her Ma was never really comfortable in those gatherings. Her Ma never felt at home in exchanging recipes. Or in gossiping about whose daughter was seen with whose son. And where. Things that were most frequently discussed in these afternoons. She made herself available in those afternoons because that was the polite thing to do. But what she really wanted to do was to talk about the novel she has recently read. Or how she got her hands on a particular album of Suchitra Mitra . Things Titin's aunts rarely wanted to talk about. Or to listen being talked about. Rekha, therefore, remained quiet. Silence became her shield against the intrusion of a world which everyone has labeled as "feminine.
The only exceptions were the times when she talked about Titin's birth. Her only daughter's birth. Her only child's birth. Titin was the only girl-child in the family. She had eight other male cousins with whom she had shared different parts of her childhood. Her aunts were the proud mothers of these eight boys. Most often,in these meetings, Rekha became the only woman who had given birth to a girl.Who was the mother of a girl. Rekha loved to narrate Titin's birth-story in the company of women who had given birth to boys.

* * * *
It was an especially cold day. At least, that's what her Ma says. The day she was born was an especially cold day. As her Ma likes to say, a cold wave was blowing over Kolkata. Ma, by that time, had already stayed in the female ward for more then two months. Titin was a breach baby. Her head upwards near her mother's heart, where most babies find a place to keep their legs, she had begun to let Rekha know that raising her wouldn't be that easy. Rekha would often quote her gynecologist, who supposedly said, "Take good care of this one. She hasn't yet learnt to bow her head. None of Titin's male cousins was exactly a breach baby.
Titin met the man when she was five. But at that point his round gold-rimmed glasses intrigued her more than the so-called differences between bowed heads and raised heads. But much later in life what he had said would make much more sense. Especially when she would begin to look desperately for something which would set her apart. Something that would make her feel spcial. Exceptional. Rekha's memories proved to be important in other ways too. Titin came to realize and believe, we are rarely born alone. She wasn't born alone. Nor would have her birth made any sense to her if Rekha had not repeated it so often. In the company of women who had given birth to sons. In the company of men who never acknowledged her as their friend.
Titin was born in the early morning. At the crack of the dawn. Exactly five hours after Rekha felt her labor pain. According to Ma, she woke up in the middle of the night surrounded by a blanket of wetness. Ma would screw up her nose and say, "At first I thought I have peed in my sheets. Then I realized, oh my god, it's the fluid. Unlike most women Titin knew, her Ma was extremely unabashed when talking of her bodily fluids and the moment she would utter the word "then, her eyebrows would be raised and her eyes would light up. Supposedly, Ma called the attending nurse, who in a wintry night in Kolkata had better things to do than attend her female patients whose waters might break at any point. Ma called her the second time. This time, the woman right next to her and who had given birth to a girl couple of days ago, opened her eyes. Understanding very quickly what exactly was the problem she said, "Didi, do you think your voice will really disturb their buffalo-like slumbers? Think of something else. Ma lay in her bed thinking of a way out. Ma lay in her hospital bed with the inner skin of her thighs getting progressively wet. They weren't just moist anymore, they were fast getting wet. Finally she got up, slipped her feet into her rubber sandals and walked out of her ward. She never said how she felt as she passed the long rows of the beds, filled with women who have either given birth or are preparing to. Neither did she haver say what exactly the time was when she walked out.She walked down the long corridor into the staircase. She began to climb up. Tiptoe. Tiptoe. Her body bent with Titin's weight. The heaviness of life inside her. The heaviness preventing her from attaining the pace she expects from herself. Ma climbed. And walked. Another set of rooms down a long corridor. Until she came to what they called the "labor room. Where she lay in a bare iron cot until her gynecologist came. She would never forget to mention that by that time she had lost her sense of time.
A birth of a human being is never merely a birth. So even when Titin's Ma,Rekha lay in the iron cot, eager to relieve the heaviness inside her, she knew the process of relieving herself would not be easy. On the one hand, giving birth is also about thoroughly officially registering that birth. On the other hand, the baby-shaped heaviness inside her was all prepared to thrust out its ten little toes. Unlike most babies, who thrust out their little heads. Which might lead to both her and her baby's death. So as she lay there in the iron cot, she kept thinking to herself, "Have they send the call book to my doctor? Around her, the doctors and the nurses moved briskly about. Injecting one. Helping another to give birth. At one point, Rekha mustered enough courage to ask a nurse, "Sister, do you know whether a call-book has been sent to Dr.Bose? The nurse looked at her with a face Rekha could not read. And snapped back, "That has nothing to do with you. You're supposed to rest. And then, with a softer tone, "Try to get some sleep.. Ma didn't get any sleep. Instead she kept thinking about the call-book. What exactly is a "call-book? Does it look like a note-book or a piece of paper? When exactly did they begin calling it a "call-book? Whatever is it, has it been send to her doctor?By the time she reached the third question, she could feel the acute pain in her lower abdomen. Two little feet pushing downwards. That heaviness called life eager to come out.
After what seemed to her an endless amount of time, her doctor came rushing in. Even in her intense pain and discomfort, Ma realized he was still buttoning his cream colored shirt. His sweater hang around his neck waiting to embrace his hands. He came close to her, examined her. But just during those moments when she was being examined, Ma realized, right at that moment, that she wants to feel safe.Re-assured. That nothing will happen to her. To her baby. She also realized, at this point, to her, the feeling of being safe isn't just about the accuracy and knowledge of medicine. She needs human touch. She needs a smile.
Titin was born during a time and a space where fathers and husbands were never allowed during the childbirth. Childbirth was strictly a female affair. To be undertaken by women. In the presence of other women. And in the absence of men. Men could be let in only if they were doctors. In the government hospital where Titin was born, childbirth was performed under the scrutiny of the hospital crew”the gynecologist, the nurses, the house-staffs. Letting in a loved one would somehow destroy the pristine objectivity of medicine. Consequently, Anil never witnessed his daughter's birth. Neither was he present to smile at the mother of his newborn daughter, a woman has lived with him for eleven and a half years.
Rekha realized, that, to the doctor who would, at last relieve her, she was little more than a woman with a swollen belly. He looked at her. Just like most women who come to him. Nervous. Anxious. Her body draped in the hospital green. The green cloth in which all to-be-operated bodies were draped. The kind of green which gives everyone a strange anonymity. The kind of green which gave Rekha a strange anonymity. Did her doctor ever try to find within the mass of swollen green the woman who sat on her narrow hospital bed and read Anna Karenina late into the night? While she patiently waited for her first born, or rather, her only born? Rekha wondered.
Ma remembered specifically how the young anesthetist looked. Tall, around 5 feet 10. A thin mustache on the space above his upper lip. A lock of hair falling on the right forehead. As he fished out the needle, he smiled at Ma, asked her a question. Which she would interpret as rather a meaningless one. "Have you ever been to Darjeeling? A question which attempted to distract her. To fend off any resistance. A question built upon the assumption that she will be afraid and even, unwilling to pass momentarily into oblivion. So she said, "Please, I am old enough. Just go ahead and push the syringe. Or that's what she used to say later. So Titin's Ma receded into a temporary darkness. Willingly. Without any resistance. A darkness from which she was not sure she will ever emerge. When she did, the swollenness was gone. Instead, she had a scar on her lower abdomen. Exactly at the point where they took the heaviness out. A scar which will be hers, forever.