‘I Want A Boy’ – A Doctor’s Memoir

Slaps, silence and a baby hanging from its placenta – doctor’s memoir reveals India’s obsession with sons

• A woman’s body is seen only as a tool to birth sons and her physical labour is reduced to a form of slavery in patriarchal systems.

Dr. Aruna Kalra’s new memoir reveals the dark underbelly of India’s maniacal obsession with male heirs and the stupefying procedures that women are forced to undergo to birth a son – even if they often pay with their own lives in the process.

In her new memoir ‘I Want A Boy’, senior obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr. Aruna Kalra shares her real-life experiences as a witness and victim of India’s obsession with male heirs. The book lays bare the horrors of female foeticide, female infanticide and sex-selective procedures that continue to flourish in the country despite laws and decades of social activism to protect the girl child.

The author narrates case studies of unimaginable pregnancy complications and selective abortions that are a result of India’s misogynistic cultural norms. All these underline the fact that a woman’s body is seen only as a tool to birth sons and her physical labour is reduced to a form of slavery in patriarchal systems.

The stories also expose India’s dismal medical system and the sorry state of our government hospitals.

Here is an excerpt from the book published with the author’s permission.

By Dr. Aruna Kalra

“Hey Sundari, look at your baby!” the doctor was shouting at her. The newborn baby girl was hanging upside down, the obstetrician grabbing her tiny feet with her hands.

“What is it? A boy or a girl,” asked the doctor. But the patient wouldn’t answer. She glanced at her daughter and looked away. She didn’t seem to want her or acknowledge her presence. She kept mum.

The doctor yelled at her again, “Sundari, please speak and confirm whether it’s a girl or boy.”

The baby was still hanging in the doctor’s right hand, getting rubbed gently with her left hand so that she could cry and breathe. The umbilical cord was still attached to the mother’s placenta. But the patient was blankly staring at the cracked, blood-stained wall of the labour room. The doctor couldn’t cut the cord till the mother confirmed the sex, and the delay could be mortal to the baby due to the overload of blood from the placenta.

The doctor on duty was tired and exhausted after night duty. The labour room was busy and noisy. Screams and groans of labouring patients echoed in the room, overwhelming her fatigued brain. The wards were packed to double their capacity.

Each bed was occupied by two labouring women, lying on cracked, sodden mattresses in each other’s blood and amniotic fluid. Ragged bed covers and torn sheets shielded a few of them. There was no screen between the beds, with which some kind of privacy could be maintained. It was like a big hall with 20 beds and 40 or more patients, crying in labour with leaking or bleeding vaginas, trying to find a place and position.

Each bed was occupied by two labouring women, lying on cracked, sodden mattresses in each other’s blood and amniotic fluid.

The provision of hiding behind covers could not be afforded. The front wall was a glass window partition, looking towards the hospital entrance. The huge glass window was covered by tattered curtains, and newspapers were pasted with tape. The labour room was in a truly poor state, providing a voyeuristic view to anyone entering the hospital.

The frustrated doctor called out to the nurse. After multiple shouts from the ward, a nurse strolled in with an annoyed expression.

“What is it doctor, why are you shouting? There is a hell of a lot of work pending. What is it?”

“Sister, the lady is not uttering the sex of the newborn. I can’t cut the cord. The baby will die of cold and overload. Please do something.”

Nurses in government hospitals are not to be ordered. They are permanent employees. Nurses have seen many such doctors come and go. Handling the erratic and unreasonable behaviour of their patients is just a routine job for them, which they perform as reflex action. They would just ignore the junior doctors’ commands when told to perform such trivial duties.

Without noticing the nurse’s irritation, the doctor requested her to persuade the patient to announce the sex of the baby before cutting the cord. Generally, the nurses are very good at it, since they admonish the patients and convince them to speak up. But this time, she was disturbed and annoyed at the call for such an idiotic job, and she did something terrible; she moved towards the patient and slapped her hard, hurling abusive words at her in quick succession.

“What insane behaviour!” I said, shocked and astonished.

But the nurse was unfazed, and another slap followed. The patient didn’t cry or moan and kept lying there expressionless as a stone. The mother of the newborn wouldn’t announce that she had delivered a daughter again.

Sundari lay motionless, tears coursing down her cheeks, struggling with the unexpected result of her fifth pregnancy and childbirth. She knew a bitter, cruel reality waited for her outside the labour room.

A fresh gush of blood poured from the vagina into the perineal bucket on the floor. The mother’s placenta was separating.

A cat was perched on the windowsill, waiting in anticipation of devouring the placenta. The cat was at home here in the hospital and was a permanent resident of the labour room ever since she was a kitten. The feline knew that she would be able to feast on the placenta as soon as it was dropped into the perineal bucket.

Our rather ferocious furry friend also knew that no one in the room would ever try to stop her from getting her bloody meaty meal. The rest of the team were busy with the baby’s delivery and would usually be gathered around the mother when this happened.

The officials were in complete apathy about cats and dogs roaming around within the hospital premises and everyone pretended that they just did not exist.

I was also too busy to bother about the cat. “Sister, please add ten units oxytocin to the drip,” I ordered.

Sister gazed at me, conveying her disapproval. “Doctor, please ask your juniors to do all this. Let me go and call her attendants before the placenta comes out. Once the placenta is out, we won’t have any proof that the girl belongs to her.”

The nurse rushed and called out for the relatives of Sundari to come near the labour room gate. The big veranda in front of the labour room was full of people. Aged grannies, mothers and mothers-in-law, sons and brothers, kids of every shape and size filled the space. Morning tea was getting distributed with rusks and biscuits. People were spread on bed sheets, dari, chattai, chatting in between their sips of tea. The labour room brought good news of new babies being born, congratulations echoed, followed by distribution of sweets.

“Relatives of Sundari, please come to the labour room gate.”

The announcement echoed in the veranda, startling Sundari’s mother-in-law. She prodded her daughter to listen to what the nurse had to say. The lady rose from her resting position and moved towards the nurse.

“Come on, quick, it’s an emergency!” the nurse pulled the sister-in-law inside.

Pointing towards one of the labour rooms, she pushed the lady inside and asked her to tell the sex of the newborn hanging upside down in the doctor’s hand. The newborn’s brain was flushed with blood.

Pulling her veil on her mouth, the sister-in-law examined the sex of the baby closely and declared bitterly, leering at the mother, “It’s a girl!”

“Good,” replied the nurse. “Now get out from here, and let us do our work. Already too much time has been wasted because of this dumb lady.”

The doctor cut the cord, and delivered the placenta, even as our fat cat was waiting to grab it from the bucket.

Meanwhile, the newborn was handed over to the nurse to be examined by the paediatrician.

A couple of injections to contract the uterus were given prophylactically to prevent postpartum bleeding. I started suturing the perineal cut without local anaesthesia, as I knew requesting the nurse for it would trigger unnecessary wrath. And no one else was around to fetch the anaesthetic drug or even the syringe. Episiotomy suturing was needed urgently to stop bleeding.

Sundari lay motionless, tears coursing down her cheeks, struggling with the unexpected result of her fifth pregnancy and childbirth. She knew a bitter, cruel reality waited for her outside the labour room.

Her devious sister-in-law embraced her mother, feigning a grief-stricken expression. “It’s a girl again!” she said, almost crying.

The elder daughter-in-law sitting next to her mother-in-law was relieved. Her undisputed position as a mother of a son, mother of the heir to the family, was retained. She had achieved it through 15 years of resilience, humiliation, and torment after finally delivering one son after four daughters.

Sundari’s mother-in-law started crying out loudly, “She must not have taken the holy drug right. Her evil spirit will ruin my son.”

Everyone was watching the tragedy, listening to her wails, sympathizing with Sundari’s family.

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Courtesy: eShe – an independent South Asian media platform that amplifies women’s voices and stories of our shared humanity.