Chapter 80

73. Changing Tides

Trigger warning - Child Loss, Postnatal depression, General depression and Grief 

PAST

It was Keshav's service termination letter that heralded Urmila's worse days.

Until then she had been the queen of the house and the apple of his eyes; and he, the overlord of her heart!

When Kirti was eighteen months old and Keshav and Urmila were two months pregnant with their second child, Keshav lost his job.

The company branch he worked at was shutting down over low profit, the employees being dismissed without any consideration.

When he sat at home, her status and prestige in the society were lost in no time, falling to the lower rungs of the hierarchy. As quickly as her status fell, a little slower than that, her comforts were tapered.

Keshav could no longer afford the matinee nights, 5-star dinners, and holiday trips.

Urmila was already afflicted with a condition that made her prone to mood swings, the sudden shift in her lifestyle made her even more irritable. She fretted how Keshav would be able to bear the expenses of their children. One was not even born yet!

Every other day, despite Keshav's best efforts, they ended up fighting and sleeping in different beds.

The initial excitement of marriage had also worn off for Keshav after the first child was born. Now when he had begun to see the reality of the world, of marriage and the struggle of keeping it afloat, he had no patience for Urmila's criticisms and whining.

He was facing a midlife crisis and to be subjected to such stress made him snap quite often.

'What are you doing here? Will listening to songs help our condition? Go and apply somewhere!' She would push him.

Keshav, who wished to mope and contemplate over the crisis, would retort, 'Why? Can't bear to see my face because I am jobless now!'

'Exactly! Don't show me your face until you have found another job!'

'Shiv Pujan Sahay,' Keshav would begin to reply, 'in his story Kahani Ka Plot, writes, Ameeri Ki Kabr Par Ugi Gareebi Ki Ghaas bohot zehreeli hoti hai ---The flowers of poverty that sprout on the grave of prosperity and affluence are venomous. I can see the toxicity in your eyes, Urmi. I can see! So you married me for my job!'

'Yes, Keshav, the dowry of fifty thousand rupees and that branded watch - latest model, yes that was the payment my parents paid for an earning groom!'

If the present circumstances weren't toxic enough, Karuna made sure to contribute her bit.

Instead of supporting and guiding her children through the tough times, she saw it as a time suitable to humiliate her daughter-in-law and show Urmila her place. After all, it was Karuna’s money that was running the house now.

If she heard Urmila crave for a dish, she'd taunt, 'Curb that tongue of yours, your husband is sitting at home now!' 

If Urmila felt queer and would anxiously wish to be taken to the doctor, Karuna would turn it down by saying, ‘I am a nurse myself. It is nothing.’ When Keshav would look uncertainly at his mother, she would ask, ‘Have I not given birth? Have I not assisted deliveries before? You must save money now that you are out of a job.’

While Keshav and Karuna went to snore, Urmila was left to juggle between staving off her fears and rocking Kirti to sleep. She would often cry bitterly thinking if something were to happen to the baby and her, these miserly people would then organize a huge mourning function and feed Brahmins and donate cows.

That is what society was. To not care for the living, and then when the alive was dead, to fill their grave with expensive flowers.

Driven by jealousy and revenge, Karuna refused to see that Urmila was not a divine woman blessed with a mantra to invoke Gods who rewarded her with sons. She was carrying the blood of this family, of Keshav!

Karuna had been a little supportive during the first delivery but a girl as a first child had her both disappointed and secretly cheerful. She was disappointed because it was a girl child! A girl child was the harbinger of misery and see how time had proved her beliefs true!

A year into her birth and the girl child has eaten her father’s job, Karuna was often heard mumbling to herself. It was altogether a different matter that when Kirti's tiny fingers had clasped Karuna’s calloused ones for the first time, Karuna’s heart had trembled. If only Urmila was not in the picture, Karuna could love freely.

Karuna had been secretly happy that Urmila had given birth to Kirti because in giving birth to a girl, she had failed as a woman. She had fallen behind women like Karuna and Mrs.Ojha whose wombs had borne boys - after all, it was boys who ruled the world.   

Karuna wanted the egoistic Urmila to come and bow at her feet. She wanted her daughter-in-law to beg for money but stubborn Urmila preferred penury to spreading hands before her mother-in-law or sobbing before Mrs.Ojha. 

Whatever anger or complaints she had, she directed only to her husband because he was the only person she truly considered hers.

When Keshav was fed up with everyday arguments; when contemplating over existential questions did not give him the same joy as it used to; and when Karuna’s supremacy and taunt began to rub him off the wrong way; he began to go out for job interviews. At most of the places, he was turned down because he failed to keep up to date with recent skills and at some places, because of his poor English speaking abilities. The only place that accepted him had him moving to Surat. 

With a heavy heart, he kissed his daughter and pregnant wife goodbye. Urmila felt elated as well as desolate. However imperfect, he was her only support in this house.

‘When will you come back?’ She asked.

‘Hah! When I was at home, you didn’t want to see my face. Now, when I am going, you are like this! What? Is this a trick to ask when I will be taking you to the matinee next?’

When a miffed Urmila hadn’t replied, he had said, ‘Fine, now don’t send me off with this face. I will be here with you on your delivery day. Take care of our baby for me.’ The impending separation brought out all the softer emotions in them.

None of the two could keep their promise. Neither could he arrive on the delivery day nor could she take care of their child. 

Grief did not come immediately.

No, she did not feel the loss immediately when she was told that the child - she was a girl - was born dead.

Wheeled out from the labor room, when she was transferred to the maternity ward’s bed, she felt out of place there seeing all the women awaiting babies to  be delivered either into the world or brought into their arms from the nurseries. She was the only one who awaited grief to engulf her in its arms.

Twenty-two and a mother of one, she should have been world-wise, no? But there she lay on a bed covered in a sheet, the color of it representing loss and grief. She lay there alone with no child bundled next to her demanding her attention. She lay there not knowing how to behave in such a situation.

Her mother-in-law had come early in the morning and having heard of stillbirth had left after saying some empty words. Her husband was miles away.

Was it her punishment of not wanting the child? 

The first pregnancy had been an accident. She was coerced into the second one. She hadn’t wanted to be a mother so soon after her first child - she didn’t think she was capable of managing two children - but Karuna and others had said, ‘Sath sath mein dono pal jayenge.’ Keshav had agreed too and to abort was a sin!

Tears did not come to her when Keshav had come and she had heard him weep next to her. She had only said, ‘I would have named her Hridaya. I had decided if it was a boy Hardik with double i and if it was a girl, then Hriday with an extra a.’

If tears didn't come, anger would come to her in huge amounts. 

He cried and moved on, ready enough to pound her the next week while she felt no grief. Anger zapped through her veins, as he released himself inside her groaning and grunting, licking and lapping while she lay there mute, imagining a million ways to push him away.

She felt like slitting Mrs.Ojha’s throat when the woman said, ‘Whatever happens, happens for good. You already had a girl, what use you had of another girl, Keshav?’ while her husband stood there mute.

Anger came when her bones twisted and ached; her periods unusually heavy, her pads unable to soak her fluids as she dirtied the path while traipsing the passage between her bed and her bathroom, but no help was hired and she had to mop the floors in her incapacitated state and also massage her aching joints on her own. Karuna said it was her ‘nautanki’ while Mrs.Ojha supported her by adding, ‘Did we not give birth to children? We did the entire household work and continued!’

She was incensed when Keshav left the job at Surat and returned home.

‘Why?’ She had screeched.

‘Pay isn’t good. Food is bad. I miss my daughter. I am driven mad thinking about you. I’m sick!’

‘What would you do now?’ She asked.

‘I will do some business.’

She was mad when he went to his mother to get his business funded and fund she did, but every business was a flop show. 

Then he began to keep company with people Urmila did not like the look of. 

When Keshav bought and parked auto in their verandah, stating he had become a part of Padhe-Likhe-Berozgar-AutoChalak-Samaj (Literate But Jobless Auto-Riders Society) and announced that he was to start taking passengers from the next day, Urmila saw red. Karuna wasn’t happy either - she hadn’t educated her boy for this day - but reconciled with the situation.

Urmila packed her bags and bundling her daughter to her chest, she left for her father’s house. 

‘A woman has no home of her own. Before her marriage, she lives at her father’s place and after marriage, at her husband’s. And at old age, if she’s lucky, she lives with her son at his place. Go home, there’s no place for you here,’ Her mother said, and after being the laughingstock among her cousins; she boarded a train, pledging never to look back at the place that couldn’t even provide her comfort when she needed it.

‘It is not you, child. Don’t believe them,’ she would keep repeating to her child.

‘It’s me. I am cursed. My rich father was reduced to a debtor by the time I came of age. My father married me to a decent man in service. He loses his job and becomes an auto driver. Don’t worry, daughter. I will do something. I will become rich and you won’t have to go through what I went.’

She decided to study but she realized soon enough that she wasn’t energetic enough to handle a child, a house, and studies together. Tomorrow...Tomorrow and the years flew by and then she was pregnant again.

She was furious when she came to know that Karuna had taken her to the gynecologist, not for a normal ultrasound but to get the sex of her child determined. 

‘What would she have done? What would you have done if it was not a boy? Keshav! I am asking you!’

‘Urmi, please...don’t unnecessarily create arguments. I did not know, okay!? It must be Mrs.Ojha’s idea. The important thing is that it is a boy! We are going to become parents to a boy!’ 

A disillusioned Urmila went about her pregnancy in a detached manner. The only time she paid attention was when she had pushed the boy out and they were tapping his back. She waited with a bated breath and released it only when she heard him cry. 

Her mother-in-law came quite early and stayed till late. Her husband stayed with her the entire time. Her daughter was looking at her brother with eyes full of love and curiosity. But there was someone else too. 

Grief! 

Grief that had eluded her all this time; now when it came, it came in manifolds.

While others rejoiced in the new addition, she mourned for the one who had not been able to make it. While the one next to her cried, tears flowed from her eyes for the one who hadn’t cried. Hridaya.

Then, she cried at any and everything. She cried because the day came too soon. She wept because Kirti would not eat her meals. She cried and pushed him away when Keshav would make love to her and she would cry when he left her side. 

She grieved because she hadn't wanted this life. She cried because she knew she deserved more.

The baby boy didn’t feel like her own. It was a completely different entity. She felt nothing when she looked at him; when he smiled, her heart didn’t skip a beat like it did for Kirti and when he cackled, she didn’t feel warmth engulf her.

He would keep wailing beside her and she would feel too tired to console him. 

They called her mad these days. ‘No need to go to the doctor, Keshav. This is just her trying to get away from her responsibility. Ask her if she wants to go to the cinema or the beach, she will be ready in a jiffy.’

Keshav did take her to a doctor who prescribed her medicines which did nothing to improve her condition.

She still felt sad, mad, and sleepy. She was always sleepy and when she was brutally woken up because her children needed her attention, she felt more anger built up in her because why was she the only one to stay awake and put vigil while they burned in fevers!

Why create such narratives about parents and create pressure!? Parents were also humans after all! 

She did not want to wake up!

She cried as she fed and put them to sleep.

There was only her daughter who helped her. Doing little chores for her even when she was so young. Patting her head, pressing her feet, wiping the tears, and getting her medicines.

But what could she give the girl in return?!

Was she able to give herself anything!? 

Urmi Singh nee Thakur was supposed to touch the sky. Here, she was unable to touch her own toe, so much in pain she was. 

They glorified motherhood. Nobody talked about viscous backaches, the broken sleep cycles!

She couldn't even afford a good school or a decent dress for her daughter, she'd often lament.

If this continued, she’d be towing the same fate. 

I suffered like my mother. She would suffer like me.

It was then she had come across a world that promised her a better future.

It had been a difficult decision but for the first time in days, in years she was seeing hope...she was seeing a future...and with a heavy heart, kissing her daughter, and sending her to school, her husband to work and changing her son’s soiled pants, she had handed him to Karuna, explaining she was going to market. Then, she had slipped away.

When she had returned, it had been too late.

[MEMBERSONLY]

[NOCOPY]