Tuesday, April 19, 2005

A quick tale 13

Re-birth
Her knees were wide open, legs splayed and she had lain like this for nearly 4 hours. This morning she woke up with a slight discomfort that had gradually grown into a steady pain. She told her mother about it who then called an autorickshaw* (‘free for delivery trips to the hospital’ it said at the back) and took her to the hospital. There, a nurse shaved her pubic hair, stripped her bare and gave her something that covered only her front. She was then led into a room where there were several other women dressed like her. All of them were screaming. The nurse pointed out a hard bed for her to lie on and scream.

The pain was now coming fast and frequent, starting from the back and spreading all the way down her legs. It seized her body leaving her paralysed for several seconds.
‘Mmmmaaa…’, she moaned.
‘Shhh…don’t scream. Put your energy into pushing’, said the nurse in an unsympathetic voice.

She grunted and tried to push like the nurse had said.
‘Look at her shitting herself. I said push, not shit’, admonished the nurse cleaning up the bed.
Another spasm was coming, she could feel it. It felt like being poked in her most private parts with a red hot iron.

‘Aaaaahh, Muruga**…can’t bear it, sister….it's so painful’, she cried.
‘Well, you should’ve thought about it when you slept with him’, came the reply. Everyone giggled.

After an hour that lasted a decade, she was engulfed in a wave of pain that crushed her very bones. It was the worst yet and she felt something sliding out of her. Like a fleshy mango being squeezed out of its skin. And in an instant, it was all over.
‘Look, it’s a girl’, said the nurse cleaning the bloody, wet bundle.
This time she wept out loud.

*three-wheeled motorised rickshaw
**Hindu God

11 comments:

Shammi said...

You really have a way of putting the most emotion into the fewest words... I admire that more than I can tell you.

Anonymous said...

Wow Ammani, amazingly written.

AF said...

Ammani, You rock!!!

Pavithra Srinivasan said...

Whew. That was intense, ma'am. Painful, though. Oof. :-)

Vinod said...

How come women get to do all the fun part :-)??

just kidding! there must a good reason God chose women with this responsibility!

-Vinod

Amrita said...

i agree a very intense mail...i wonder how a women undergoes that kind of pain for hours?

~phobiac~ said...

when the going gets tough...the tough gets going...I guess !

Anjali said...

Dawnign the role of amma is awesome.

Anonymous said...

well i was just reading all your other quick tales. all were good and i somehow left most of them without writing a comment. but this post stands out. excellent. just so life-like.
btw, do women really suffer so much. the post is really very intense.

Rangakrishnan Srinivasan said...

well.. it might sound or be intense and terrible.. but then, at the end, the joy experienced by the mother is inexplicable.. worth everything...

sometimes, I do think God was unfair!!!

Krishna said...

Touching post really.

Reading between the lines...Goin 2 hospital in a free rick, many women in maternity ward and hard beds, makes me wonder whether the new mother's tears had something to do with the fact that newborn was a female child??

- Krishna