“I’m sorry, too,” she said. She didn’t want to be the kind of wife who raised her voice at her husband and fought with him. That was well and good in the movies and television shows, but in real life, Asha knew that it was important for her to listen to her husband. He knew more than she did; he was worldlier than she was.
“We’re both worried and upset, and that’s why we fought,” Pratap said. “Are you feeling better now?”
Asha nodded.
“Doctor Swati is going to give us information about schools for Manoj, and once we know . . . once we know what that will cost . . .” She let her words trail away. She had never been the one to make decisions for her family. That was Pratap’s job, but now she was talking like an equal, telling him what she thought they should do. It felt wrong, but it also felt exhilarating, like she had a say in her life.
Pratap nodded. “That’s OK. We’ll buy a flat when we have Manoj’s school settled.”
“Are you sure?” Asha asked.
“Well, I think we should have the security of a home first, but the money is, as you say, also yours, Asha. So if you feel that the school is more important, then that’s what we’ll do,” Pratap said.
He seemed submissive and Asha didn’t like that. She felt ashamed of herself.
“I’m sure there will be money left for a flat,” Asha said, even though she had no idea whether that would be possible. “And I didn’t say the money is mine, Pratap; it’s ours. It belongs to our family.”
“OK,” Pratap said, and smiled at her. “You look so beautiful when you’re pregnant.”
Asha smiled back shyly.
“I miss the children,” Asha confessed, and stroked her belly. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through the next months.”
“We’ll come every day, I promise. Just a few months here and you’ll be home again,” Pratap said, and Asha knew he was thinking that there was no home for her to go back to. If they didn’t buy a flat, they had nothing. The owner had probably rented out the hut in the village to someone else by now. They couldn’t just live with Kaveri and Raman forever. They had to buy a flat, buy something, or rent something as soon as the pregnancy ended and the baby was born.
Asha weakened then and wanted to tell Pratap that he should just go and put a deposit on a flat, but she didn’t. Pratap might be worldly and smarter than she was, but he wasn’t seeing the big picture here. Raman was influencing him; she had to be the sensible one. The strong one.
It took one week—just a week—for Asha to get adjusted to the Happy Mothers House. It was like Kaveri had said, “We’ve always had to work. Cook, clean, wipe someone’s ass, something—this will be the first time when someone else will do all the work.”
In addition to not having any housework, making a new friend had made the house inviting, almost cozy. Keertana was seven months pregnant, had three children of her own—ten, eight, and six—and was delighted to be away from her house and family.
“Once in a while, a woman needs her rest. The best part, my devil of a mother-in-law has to take care of the three brats and that son of hers,” Keertana said, smiling.
This was her second time as a surrogate, and because pregnancy, labor, and delivery had always been easy for her, she thought she’d do it yet again if they’d let her.
“Now we have a house, a TV, a car—next time we can save for a dowry for our daughter,” she said, rubbing her belly vigorously. “Look, this is a place of relaxation. You should think of it that way. You don’t want to get all upset and hurt the baby or yourself.”
“I miss my children,” Asha had said to her stiffly when they first met in the TV room. They sat in the back while the others eagerly watched a Telugu evening soap opera, Anandam (“Happiness”).
“We all miss our children,” Keertana snapped at her. “You’re not the only glowing example of motherhood here. We all miss our children, and we all deal with it. You’ve been sitting around crying your eyes out.”
Asha wanted to snap back and say that maybe she was so upset because she was a better mother than Keertana, but she kept quiet. She realized soon enough that there was no malice behind Keertana’s stern words. She was stating a fact, and maybe it was her directness that got Asha to stop feeling sorry for herself.
“I like this show,” Keertana said. “That Tanushri is such a bitch.”
Anandam was about a wealthy Telugu family living in Hyderabad. The father owned several factories, and his wife was a religious and pious homemaker. They had three grown sons, and the story circled around the lives of the sons and their wives, and their interactions with the factory owner and his wife. The whole family lived together in a massive and opulent house, and there were fights and over-the-top drama to keep everyone engaged every evening from seven to eight.
Tanushri was married to the youngest brother and was the vamp of the story, always up to no good. Every episode showed Tanushri making trouble for her family members.
“I’m telling you, once Manisha finds out that it’s Tanushri who’s secretly feeding her a contraceptive . . . all hell will break loose,” Keertana said as she popped some roasted peanuts into her mouth.
Anandam had been a constant evening fixture at Kaveri’s house, too. Kaveri and Asha had watched every episode with mounting tension and pleasure.
“Do you think they will introduce a surrogate in this story?” Keertana wondered. “That would be something. Manisha cannot have a baby and uses a surrogate. It could be like our story.”
“Why would they do that?” Asha asked.
“Because it’s a very special story,” Keertana said. “We’re giving a gift to someone—something they can’t get themselves—and they give me the resources to build a better life. What do you plan to do with your money?”
Asha shrugged.
“Don’t give it all to your husband and let him take care of it; that’s a mistake you don’t want to make. Charu . . . the one in the orange sari.” Keertana pointed to a plump woman who was about nine months pregnant from the looks of it and resembled a very ripe orange. “She gave all the money the previous time to her husband. He took it and ran away with some bitch from their village. She was left alone with two kids and no money. This time she had Doctor Swati put it all in the bank—Doctor Swati is helping her buy a house.”
Asha warmed up to Keertana as she told her about the other women at the surrogate house. There was Urmila; this was her first time, but she had tried twice before and lost the baby—though she had still made some money.
“Now she is fully pregnant, so this is the jackpot for her,” Keertana told Asha.
Ragini was doing this for a third time and said she was tired of it. She was thirty-five years old and her body was beaten. But her husband was an alcoholic and she had three daughters. She was saving money for their dowries.
This was Gita’s second time with the same parents. The parents had been really good to her with the first baby, buying her a TV and fridge and whatnot. They had even come and stayed in Srirampuram, visiting her every day in the last month of her pregnancy.
“My son, Manoj, he’s very smart,” Asha confided in Keertana. “I know all mothers say that, but he is. He’s only five years old and he can already read and write, both in Telugu and English. I’m going to use the money to send him to a special school.”
Keertana nodded thoughtfully. “Isn’t there one here in Srirampuram? It’s supposed to be a really good school. The chief minister’s grandson goes there, I think.”
“My husband wants to buy a flat,” Asha said. “I don’t know if we’ll have money left for both the flat and Manoj’s education.”
“Education is very important in this day and age, and if your son is smart, that’s what you should spend the money on,” Keertana said. “Just do it again in two years or so and buy the flat, too. Doctor Swati won’t let you do it more than three times anyway, and you have to be no more than thirty-five years old. So think about that and make your decisions.”
“Very, very easy,” Keertana said. “The baby just popped out. I had about fifteen minutes of labor. But if you’re in a lot of pain, Doctor Swati will give you medicine. It’s safe for the baby and everything, so don’t worry about that.”
Doctor Swati had talked about the pain medicine with Asha. The parents had signed a release saying that Asha could use the medicine if she wanted or needed it during her labor. But Asha couldn’t imagine putting any medicine in her body when giving birth. She knew that Doctor Swati was a really good doctor, but what if something happened? She couldn’t ruin a baby’s life just because she couldn’t handle the pain of labor.
“Did you feel bad about giving the baby to the parents?” Asha asked.
“Not at all,” Keertana said. “I know some of the mothers cry and nonsense, but I always knew this was a means to an end. I was relieved when it was born. Out with it and away with it. And frankly, I was glad to not be taking one home. No way was I cleaning up another baby’s shit.
“I didn’t even see it after it was born. I also told the parents not to send pictures and all that,” Keertana continued. “I’m just a coolie; the suitcase belongs to someone else. And you’d better take that smile off your face when you stroke your belly, Asha. There’s only hurt and pain if you forget this one is not yours to keep. It’s a suitcase. The contents are valuable, but you give it away when you reach the destination.”
Asha’s hand froze midstroke and she put it next to her thigh. She leaned over and picked up a bowl of chakli that was in front of Keertana. There was nothing like eating fresh chakli—warm, savory treats made with graham flour and fried to a crisp in peanut oil—and there was extra pleasure in knowing that she hadn’t been the one to make them.
Chakli in hand, Asha let out a sigh, leaning back on her chair to watch Tanushri cook up a new scheme on Anandam.
Asha took the computer class instead of the English one. She didn’t need to learn English, she decided, or rather, Keertana decided for her.
“We’re thinking of buying a computer with some of our money,” Keertana told her. “It’s good for the children to get familiar with computers at an early age. The future is all computers, so it’s important they learn. You should think about it, too.”
Manoj’s school, Pratap’s flat, and now a computer—five lakh rupees was dwindling quickly and they didn’t even have the money yet. No wonder, Asha thought, women came back to be surrogates again and again.
The first computer class was all about how to turn on a computer and open something called the Internet. This was different from her life in the village, different from the day-to-day at Kaveri and Raman’s flat. Asha had gone to school for a few years until she was ten, but after that she had helped around the house. School had never been important, not for girls. Their class had been a hut where their teacher, a retired schoolmaster, taught them the alphabet in Telugu. Asha had learned to read and write but hadn’t aspired for more.
As a girl in her village, life was about taking care of the house, helping your mother, and then getting married and taking care of your husband, your children, and your mother-in-law. Asha spent her days sweeping their hut—Mohini never had to do that, and now if they would be able to buy a flat, she would never have to live in a hut again. Mohini would wear a white shirt and a blue skirt and go to a proper school. She would learn English. She would not look at a computer as if it were something special but see it as a normal thing, something she knew, understood.
The computer teacher was a young woman in her early twenties who was apparently Doctor Swati’s niece. Her name was Divya, and she wore modern clothes—pants and a shirt and very pretty black shoes with a heel and a golden buckle on the side.
“You can even read the newspaper on the Internet,” she told Asha. She sat next to her and took her to a page where the news was in Telugu.
“I can read Telugu,” Asha said happily, because everything else was in English, and Asha was having a difficult time with that.
Divya taught Asha how to use the mouse and click on blue words to read more. Tentatively, Asha approached the news, but she couldn’t figure out how to use the mouse. She didn’t want to annoy Divya with too many questions in the first class, so she kept it to herself, reading what was on the page that Divya had conjured up for her.
Not that Asha was interested. Who cared if Narendra Modi became the prime minister or that Gandhi boy did? And the Telangana riots were what they were—if Andhra Pradesh was one state or two, how would her life change? And whether Aishwarya Rai lost all the weight she had put on with her precious baby or not—if she would make movies again or not—did it really matter? Who cared?
Kaveri loved the movies and was a great fan of Salman Khan. She watched all his movies even though she didn’t understand much Hindi. Asha only liked to see Telugu movies or listen to Telugu movie songs on the radio and watch the songs on the many movie-song TV shows. But she didn’t care enough to read about it on the computer; in fact, sitting here in front of the bright monitor was making her sleepy.
In the middle of class, Charu cried out as a gush of water came out of her where she stood.
“I think the baby is about to come,” she said, panic in her voice.
Almost immediately, Revati, a maid, and one of the day nurses were by her side, walking her away from the computer class.
Another maid came to clean up the floor, and the class came to an end earlier than usual. Asha was grateful. She didn’t know how she would spend a whole hour sitting there, trying to be enthusiastic about a computer.
“It’s over for Charu,” Gangamma said enviously when they sat in the TV room that night after dinner. “I have another two months to go, and I can’t wait to be done with this.”
“It’s been six hours; we should have heard something by now,” Keertana said, looking at her wristwatch.
“Remember that woman, what’s her name . . . Meena,” Gita said. “She was in labor for fifteen hours. I hope that doesn’t happen to me. I can’t do fifteen hours of pain for someone else’s baby.”
“You do what you have to do,” Keertana said sternly.
“Easy for you to say,” Gangamma said. “You were in labor for fifteen minutes the first time.”
Keertana grinned proudly. “Some women are just lucky. I’ve never had a long labor, even with my own children.”
“My back is killing me,” Narthaki said. She was five months pregnant like Asha and had moved into the Happy Mothers House as soon as she got pregnant. Her family lived in Kavali, quite far from Srirampuram, so she hadn’t had the choice of staying with her family until her last trimester.
“Sometimes I think this is not worth the money,” Narthaki continued. It was her first time, too. “I’ve had my two children and now I’m doing this. It’s madness.”
“Can’t Doctor Swati help with the back pain?” Asha asked.
“She gets a massage every day,” Keertana piped in. “Narthaki just likes to complain. The food isn’t good, the maid doesn’t clean right, her clothes are never white enough . . . like she was living in a palace before this.”
“I come from a decent family,” Narthaki protested. “We just need some extra money.”
“We all need some extra money,” Gangamma said wearily. “You think that we’d be here if we didn’t?”
“I just keep thinking how strange it will be to give birth to a white baby. They have no hair,” Narthaki said. “My parents are from London. And they keep writing letters to me, and when they call, they want me to put the phone on my belly. They sent me this white machine, which Doctor Swati keeps here, and I have to play the machine—iPod, P-pod, something—with their voices close to my belly. They want to make sure the baby learns English in the womb itself. Crazy people.”
“They gave me one, too,” Asha said. “Doctor Swati plays it when I go for my checkup.”
“What do they say
?” Narthaki asked. “Mine say, hello, I love you, their names . . . whatever.”
“The mother says things like that,” Asha said, although she wasn’t sure, because it was always in English. The father spoke in Telugu:
“We live in California, and both the ocean and the mountains are close by.
“My name is Madhu and I’m your father. I love you very much.
“Your room is next to ours, and we will decorate it with butterflies and flowers for you.
“Take care of yourself, little baby.”
Asha liked to hear the father’s voice. He would be a good parent, she was sure. The skinny mother, Asha wasn’t so sure about. She couldn’t even speak Telugu properly; what would she teach this child about where she came from? Nothing. That woman was all American, all foreign. But the father. He seemed like a nice man. A good man. A good Telugu man. And his Telugu was good and clean. He didn’t insert English words in between like so many people had started to do.
“Mine sent CDs,” Keertana said. “Doctor Swati keeps them here and plays them on her computer during my checkup. It’s so stupid. The baby isn’t going to remember anything when it comes out.”
“What about your parents, Asha?” Gangamma asked. “How are they to you?”
“They’re nice,” Asha said. “They call every week and send presents. They even send toys for my children. The father is Telugu; the mother is half-Indian and half-American.”
“At least your baby won’t be white with blue eyes,” Narthaki said.
“How does it matter what it looks like?” Keertana demanded. “It’s not like we have anything to do with it.”
“We’re carrying them,” Narthaki said.
Gangamma, like Asha, wondered if she was going against the wishes of God by giving a barren woman a baby.
“If she can’t have a child, it’s because God doesn’t want her to have one,” Gangamma said. “Don’t you think we’re doing something wrong here?”
A House for Happy Mothers: A Novel Page 12