adit

Every summer that I spent in Delhi, i wondered, 'what crime have i done to go through this horrible heat!' The summer of '72 was a real scorcher, made even worse for me as I was pregnant again. Even with several baths a day, one felt hot as an oven. Nights were so bad that i could not sleep. One weekend that we spent in Faridabad with the Bhats, Sripathi taught me a trick that was very useful. Before going to bed, have a cold shower, and wear light clothes without wiping oneself with a towel. Then, lie down on just a natural mat on the floor. It really helped.
I followed his example and found it very nice as long as that coolness lasted. Then I poured water over myself again and repeated the procedure.
To escape the heat, R and I went to a hill station, Musoorie. It was so fresh and cool there, but coming back, we were in the thick of a heat wave, and the 46* C felt even more pin-pricky than it would have been if we had not gone at all. and the car journey was unbearable. It was a relief when the rains started even if Delhi turned sticky, for, to adapt Keats' famous line - if monsoon comes, can winter be far behind?

Cold Feet
Someone told us about a very good doctor who had guided other women through difficult pregnancies. When he learnt of my previous history, he ruled that on no account was I to take any medicine whatever the symptoms were, for the duration of the pregnancy. He would, he added, prescribe some vitamin E and iron-folic acid tabs when the time came, in the third trimester. In fact, I did have at least one attack of headache and another of tummy ache, but I just rested, ate satvik [bland, soothing] food and they passed.
Just a couple of months before my time, i suddenly panicked and began fretting as my delivery date grew nearer, and feeling that however good a doctor he was, I was doomed to miscarry or lose the child somehow. My confidence ebbed not just in myself but also my excellent doctor. After all, i had gone each pregnancy to the best doctor in town, hadn't I? I was convinced that only someone whom I knew well and who really cared for me personally would be able to see me through this time. My second cousin Dharma was a gynaecologist at Safdarjung hospital and i turned to her. She was very understanding but warned me that she could deliver me only in that hospital, a public one, no comparison to the private ones that ford would have paid for. Despite that issue, i clung to her as my saviour, and shame-facedly told my kindly old doctor that i was no longer coming to him. He seemed to understand.


While Dharma was quite willing to see me through the rest of the pregnancy, she tried to dissuade me from delivering in the Government hospital where she practised, since Ford would pay all the costs for the best private one in town. But there was no way she or anyone else could change my mind. Cockroaches, dingy sheets, shared rooms and all, I still clung to Dharma. However, she said it would not be correct for her to do the Ceasarean being a relative, and so she would just be present while another did it.[It had been decided that in view of my history and age, this too had to be an operation, not a natural birth].
When the subject of maternity leave came up, and my preference was for taking almost all of it after the delivery. It would keep me from worrying if I kept busy till the last moment. Dharma agreed but advised me to take some rest each afternoon. So I used to lie down on a sheet spread over the carpet in my Ford office after lunch, locking the door, for 10-15 minutes. Prodipto had a very different reaction to maternity leave. He snorted, 'what maternity leave? You don't need any! An ndean womAn just gets off her mulewhen she feels labour coming on, delivers by the wayside and then mounts again on their mule and sets about her usual duties! She even goes inside to prepare coffee for her husband to prove how strong she is'
To which mcp remark, I just snorted that I was neither Andean nor did I have a mule , and I would take all the leave I was entitled to!
Just two weeks before the due date, my colleague, Vinod and I had met on a Saturday to finish a project that we were working on [school quality and location] but could not finalise our paper. I told him, let us leave it for Monday. It was the festival of Shankaranthi and on going home, I finished the special dishes of the day, savory and sweet pongal, with Shivaram's help, but then the pain began. The baby was delivered on 15th, just after midnight, but according to the Hindu way of reckoning, the new day begins only about 2 am, so to Annaiya, it was 14th and still the day dedicated to the Sun [and the new harvest in South India].
We had deliberately not decided on any name, nor made any preparations for the new born, except get some hand-me-downs from family. It may have been superstition, though I pride myself on not being superstitious at all, but it may also have been prudence. Why invest so much emotional and rational planning on what might not be?
Even when we were discharged four days later, the baby boy had no name. The hospital certificate simply said 'Baby Padmini'! This was to have comical consequences later. Back at home, our choices for an appropriate name clustered around words meaning the Sun in honour of the festival day he was born on, and finally it was 'Aditya', the first and thus the Sun, the first created.
I do not recall any problem with that even when he joined his playschool or the various schools he went to, but years later, when he applied for a greencard in the USA, I had to sign an affidavit that ’baby padmini’ and ‘r.p. aditya’were one and the same – and how did I know that? – I had to write ‘ because I am his mother and gave birth to Aditya who was named first as 'Baby Padmini’'!