Foeticide

Dear Child,



That you’re only a twenty-weeks –old fetus, a girl in the making, don’t prevent me from telling you about a hard and heart-wrenching truth. It’s about Feticide… a barbarous practice brazenly followed by men out here in for economic reasons. Lurking in the minds of your father and paternal grandma, it may, in all likelihood, take you on when you come home in another twenty weeks. My dear child, it looks like a sin to be born a girl in this holy land. God forbid.





As you know, your three grown up sisters, they’re no longer in their teens, are now waiting to be married off. But to marry them off, as things stand today in the marriage market, is not as easy a task as you think. For their marriages demand a helluva of money as wedding dowries or groom prices. Such largesse of money, I’m scared, we would never make out during our life time. For the minimal wages we’re getting from out of our labor in the paddy fields take care of only our hand to half-mouth life.



In the midst of our economic woes, your father and his kin came to know about my conception. I conceived fourth time after several years. Surprisingly, they were happy because they thought that they would at least get a son this time. A son who’d add to the family work force; a son who’d labor out with them in the fields and tap more income for the financially distressed family; and a son who’d, in due course, take the oars from your father and take care of us in our old days. This way the world around me glorifies a son and condemns a daughter an albatross in the family neck. And your father is no exception to this misconception.



Ultrsonography or simply saying the ultra scanning should be the villain. The moment your family came to know that I wasn’t carrying a boy but a girl, they got agitated, snarled, shouted at me. Your father even beat me blue as if I was the reason for your creation.



‘What we feared all along now comes true’, your grandma bellowed, wailing and beating her wizened chest with her hands. They all felt thunder-struck and planned to abort my pregnancy. But, god save you, I stood my ground, resisted their move with all the strength at my command, and cried my head off pleading with them not to kill you now but donate you to some Child Care centers after you’re born.



My child, though they seemed pacified with my words, you are not still out of woods. Foeticide is in the offing, waiting for your home-coming. For, your grandma, a hag, won’t let you free. Engaged by the family, an ayah from a local hospital is waiting with a bottle of kalli pall [potion; milk extracted from a poisonous plant]. She would either spoon feed you with a dose of such potion to kill you instantly, or get paddy seeds inserted into your nostrils to stop your breathing. Either way they’d kill you, my dear, kill you to ward off the financial disasters that may fall on the family if you’re allowed to survive.



So far I’ve done what I could to the best of my power. I’m now helpless, baby, and utterly helpless to save you from the baby-killers… the flower eaters.



You have no options. All doors are shut on you.



So pray to Brahma, the Creator, who gave you life. Pray to Him to take away what he’d given. Do you know about tapasya? Even asuras’ king Ravana did long tapasya, got boons from Maha Vishnu, and used them only to harass rishis and sages. You, too, can do a tapasya. Close your eyes and nostrils, too, with your hands and pray to Brahma to make you melt down in my womb.



You would die honestly in my womb if you succeed in your tapasya. Honey, it’s better to die in your mother’s womb than to be killed ignominiously by your heartless relatives. I swear on your head, my sweetheart, that Brahma would listen to your prayer and stop you coming into the world alive.



Helplessly yours,



Mother.



P.s.The mother is now seen lilting, rocking an empty cradle. Constant crying makes her eyes red and throat sore. But, she seems relieved as she had, a few weeks back, when she’d delivered only a dead child. So she now says her hosannas to Brahma.





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