Custom Search

Three Stories of Motherhood - contd

by Aarti Sriram
(India)

Back to Page 1 of the story

That night, after dinner, I saw her arranging a row of syringes on the counter. She noticed me watching and quickly tried to cover them with a towel.
“IVF,” she said finally, her voice almost a whisper.
I nodded. “It must be hard.”
She didn’t reply, but I saw the way her hands shook as she capped each needle.
In that moment, I remembered my own hospital corridors, my own cold metal tables not for hope, but for farewell. Maybe that’s why I understood her silence better than her words.
A few weeks later, this thought came to me suddenly perhaps divinely. I had gone home after visiting Gurvi one evening, and my mother had said, “You looked more alive today.”
Alive. That word had felt foreign for so long.
When I told my parents about my decision to help Gurvinder, they went still. My mother’s eyes widened. “But beta, what about your own future? Your health? Your chance to have children one day?”
I took her hands. “Ma, what future? Kartal is gone. I’m not planning on marriage again.”
My father looked at me steadily. “If you’re sure, we will stand by you. But promise us you’ll think this through.”
I did think it through long and hard. And every time, the answer was the same. If my body could bring joy to someone who had lost hers, wasn’t that reason enough?
The clinic was clean and cold, with posters of smiling babies lining the walls. The nurse gave me an injection schedule a neat chart with circles and ticks, as if it were homework.
Each morning, I would have to inject myself and head to school. My students noticed my energy returning. I smiled more, scolded lesser.
When the doctor told me I’d respond well to stimulation, I felt oddly proud. “You’re very healthy,” she said. “We will retrieve the eggs next week.”
That night, I stood before the mirror, touching the small needle marks on my abdomen. For the first time in years, my reflection didn’t look empty. It looked purposeful.
On the day of retrieval, Gurvinder sat beside me, more nervous than I was.
“Reena, are you sure?” she kept asking.
I nodded. “I am more than sure.Lets do this.
Before they wheel chaired me in, she held my hand tightly. “You’re giving me something I can never repay.”
“Then don’t repay,” I said. “Just promise you are happy we are trying out this option.”
When I woke up later, my throat was dry, and Gurvi was there again, her eyes red from crying. She pressed my hand. “Doctor said twelve eggs. Twelve, Reena!”
I smiled weakly.
A few days later, she called me early in the morning. Her voice trembled with emotion.
“It worked,” she said simply. Its a single fetus.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. The test is positive. I can’t believe it.”
“I can,” I said. “You were meant to be a mother.”
There was a pause, then a soft sniffle. “Reena, when the child grows up, I’ll tell them about you. About what you did for us.”

After that call, something changed in me too. The world felt softer and I came across alive,
My mother saw glimpses of happiness in me we both cried without the heaviness , our throat gulping down a bubble.
The months passed. Gurvinder’s belly grew round, and her laughter grew louder. Every time we met, she’d make me feel the tiny kicks.
“See? Your genes are doing gymnastics,” she’d say, and we’d both giggle and say a silent prayer too.
I started writing again, this time for the college magazine, small essays about teaching, about grief, about women who rebuild themselves piece by piece.
I told them fame didn’t matter. What mattered was learning to live again.
One evening, as the Dasara lights glittered over Mysuru Palace, Gurvinder and Aman invited Aisha and Kittu over. Their adopted baby, Tia, was a chubby, smiling bundle, and Aditi danced around him like a tiny whirlwind touching Gurvi aunts tummy. We all sat together, laughing, sharing stories Aisha looked at me and said, “You know, Reena, you’ve given more than life to Gurvinder. You’ve given her peace.”
Aman shouted “Bhabhi” and Reena came nearer Aman, he told her “We have decided on the name Kartal if its a boy. My mother was very fond of him and she will be happy to have her little Kartal around again”.
I smiled teary eyed “Maybe peace was all I ever wanted too,” I said. Both Gurvi and Aisha hugged me , I felt their gratitude, with my fingers crossed and their expressions softening.
Outside, fireworks burst over the sky golden, pink, white. I thought of Kartal then, of all the things we’d planned, and whispered a quiet thank you to the heavens.
Because sometimes healing doesn’t come from letting go. It comes from giving.