He screamed for 2 minutes in ecstasy of his desire fulfilled, had a bath and went about his work as usual…….

She is screaming for two years, bathes again and again each day to remove every trace or abuse and violence on her person. Life will never be the same for her again…….

(A Real life incident narrated and known to me in person. The trauma is as told to me, and expressed as I imagine it to be by the girl within me and woman / mother as I am.)

I entered the maternity ward of the Government hospital in Delhi and my eyes scanned the many women, sitting lying, down or feeding their new born. I was looking for a young girl whom I was told was planning to abandon her new born and walk away.

Vulnerability has a way of attracting itself. A painfully slender face looked stoically into my eyes, from the bed in one corner of the room. She was wearing a torn night dress with her youth gaping out in the most inappropriate places. I slowly approached her and inquired – Geeta? She did not reply but looked up at me and looked down again.

Where is the baby? I asked? She pointed her hand in a direction and said “Nahi de rahen hain mujhe” (they are not giving me the baby).  When I asked the nurse serving in the ward she replied curtly- “How can any woman who has carried a baby not know the name of the child’s father – who are you”? Patience has never been one of my virtues and it was most certainly not going to make a sudden appearance when I needed it most. I handed over the two new night dresses to Geeta asking her to wear one of them and stomped out to the Nurses Station in the ward.

Where is Geeta’s baby I asked the head Nurse? She replied – “inside but we are waiting for her to tell us the father’s name? Until and unless she gives a name, we won’t give her the baby”. Let her see the baby and you can have it back – I said in a firm voice but she ignored. I stood there staring and she pretended as if I was not there. I was tempted to scream and make a scene but was stopped by my friend Anamika who was accompanying me. She was the one who got information about Geeta through various sources.

Anamika and I, both could not reconcile to the idea that some girl somewhere was going to deliver a child and abandon it. We were determined to find a home for the child. We had no clue about Geeta’s past or her reasons for abandoning and frankly at that time it did not matter. Both of us returned to the ward to ask Geeta the child’s father’s name.

Geeta was wedded to silence. All we could see was pain and anguish packed into a small face whenever we asked anything. How much can you pressurize a small girl who looked 16 years and had just delivered a small baby without any of her loved ones near her? She still had not changed her gaping night dress and the ward boys swarmed in and out trying to get a glimpse of her youth from her torn dress while asking us for Baksheesh in the name of the new born baby? Some lady attendants even questioned me as to why I had left the girl alone?  Geeta’s mother was nowhere in sight as if she had abandoned her. Anamika and I continuously doled out Baksheesh as attendant after attendant came in asking for it.

I helped Geeta change her dress and went back to the nursing station. I explained to the Head Nurse in as calm a voice as I could that the girl may not want to reveal the identity of the child’s father, but it does not take away her right of holding the child and feeding it? The Nurse kept arguing, abusing Geeta for being promiscuous, enjoying sex with many men etc. Hearing all this Anamika went to the side and started crying.

Sometimes it is important to retort back in the language that people understand. I shouted back at the Nurse saying that I was not going to leave without the baby. I am not ashamed to say I also used some of the choicest abuses that I had honed in my life, giving her a taste of her own filth. Whatever one person does is nobody else’s business and I was certainly not going to let this road roller of a nurse run over my frail Geeta.

Luckily a Keralite nurse (one amongst the 3) there had an intuition that I am Malayalee. It often happened with me that in normal circumstances no one could make out that I am a South Indian. But when passion and rage set in my accent would suddenly traverse the distance from North India to South India in a matter of seconds . She beckoned me to the side and said – “Don’t worry I will get you the child, you calm down. She will not give you the child until we give her a name for the father or else you have to give her a heavy bribe”? I and Anamika went back to Geeta and within 15 minutes the blessed nurse brought in the child. It was a baby boy!

Geeta’s face again showed no expression and without affection, she picked up the child and held it mechanically. I felt sorry for her. All the mothers who read this will have some or the other joy to relate when holding the baby for the first time and with relatives drooling over and trying to get the baby in their arms.  Geeta and her baby were devoid of all such pleasures. We left her there with the baby and went looking for Geeta’s mother, ringing her phone and looking at elderly ladies who were on the phone. She was not answering the phone and we had never seen her.

Finally, Geeta’s mother picked up the phone and we found her walking aimlessly on the on the road outside the hospital, complaining that her unmarried daughter had brought disgrace to the family. Patience again made a quick exit out of me, as I told her to stop complaining and shut up. I told her that we can criticize our children and punish them but not when they are vulnerable and have gone through the trauma of child birth.

Govindi (Geeta’s mother) kept on murmuring of how Geeta never told her anything about how she had conceived. So, the mother assumed that her daughter had a relationship. Whatever it was I warned Govindi that if she dares abandon her, I will file a case against her. Govindi silently followed us to the ward and no doubt with contained anger towards me.

Anamika and I handed over some new clothes to Geeta for the baby, some essential items needed after child birth along with some cash. As a parting remark I clearly told Geeta that she will not leave the hospital without telling us and that she should not run away leaving the baby. One look was enough for Govindi and she understood that she had to stay in the ward and look after Geeta, just the way any mother would do for her child.

Back in my office, I had cast the net wide sending around a mail asking people if anyone would be willing to adopt a new born. There were a couple of people interested but for two days nothing happened. Geeta was to be discharged in another two days.

And then a light shone from the heavens. A family known to me and already teeming with children eagerly offered to take the child. We could not understand their reason for taking in another child when they had so many. The blessed family did not ask me if it was a boy or a girl or from which community /religion the child belonged to?  We decided that we could not get a better offer than this and promised them the baby.

When discharged from the hospital, Geeta along with her mother unceremoniously handed over the child over to the family and walked away. The child was taken in by the family with all the pomp and show that a new born enters his home. Sweets were distributed and the baby was showered with love and affection. God could not have bestowed more grace than this. Anamika and me both felt so small and humbled when we saw how special they made the child feel. When I last saw the baby, he was being indulged by the grandmother and the mother. The other children of the house were taking turns in picking him up and carrying him, playing with him, they had another team member for future mischief.

There was silence between Geeta and me for a couple of months. Then one day, I called her up and asked her plans for getting back to her work. Before conceiving she was working in child care through an agency and was now looking to go back. I somehow had a feeling that she should not go back to the same work.

I went around looking for a job for her – anything but not housework or care giving. God does come to the rescue when we desire it most and we managed to get her a clerical job (even though she had not completed her 12th standard at school). Again, a special mention is to be made of the people who gave her the job- they are Ministers of God and I will forever be obliged to them as I am to the family who adopted Geeta’s baby.

In the next few months I started calling Geeta to my home to chat with her and hoping to erase some of her scars and bring her back to normalcy. Her stoic expressions and limited conversations made me uncomfortable and I wanted to mother her.

During one of her visits I coaxed her and asked her to tell me about her boyfriend who had abandoned her. To my surprise Geeta was not 16 but all of 21, exactly my daughters age but nevertheless looked much younger. I decided I wasn’t going to give up on her. She looked frail, and nobody could imagine that she had carried a child through a full-term pregnancy.

I probed her again and again on her life and after repeated questioning she revealed that she did not have any relationship by was raped! It shook me as I had already rehearsed the advice and chiding that I would give her for her reckless behaviour and relationship while she was still so young. Rape happened in stories and media and not so close to us? Or am I living in a dream world? And to think that her mother, me and several others thought she had consciously gone in for a relationship.

The interrogation continued just as I would have done for my daughter. Maybe I had not right but it did not occur to me at that time. She looked so helpless and vulnerable that I was determined to get to the bottom of the episode.

I asked her why she did not disclose to her parents that she was raped. Her response showed the fortitude that she was endowed with. Geeta had been raped by her cousin sisters’ husband. She felt that if she revealed this her sister would suffer and there would have been a big fight in her village.

She had borne all her father’s thrashing and mothers abuse quietly. It perplexed me as to where she got the courage to contain and take on everything on herself? She once lifted the sleeve of her dress and trousers to reveal the suicidal attempts she had made when she got to know of her conception. She had also taken some medicine off the counter to abort the child. But nothing worked. The child was destined to come.

Geeta till today insists that she will not give me the right to tell her parents that she was raped and not indulged in casual sex or had a relationship. No wonder there was no name to give the hospital authorities. She was honest and it did not even occur to her that she could have given any name and got away with it. She remained silent whenever she was asked about the child’s father. I slowly gained her confidence and she started hugging me so warmly every time we met, that unknowingly she became the child I had not given birth to.

I decided to make her talk and tell me about the trauma so that we get over it and that she can put it away as a bad experience. It was not going to be so easy as I started understanding the extent of damage that rape does? You are scarred for life. Geeta was drugged and raped by her own brother in law whom she respectfully called ‘Bhaiya’ (meaning brother in Hindi).

A 6 feet tall hefty man all of 42, Aravind, first lusts at his wife’s sister a 21-year-old girl who is struggling to make a living in Delhi, to help her father to run the family and educate her siblings. One day Aravind shocks Geeta by entering forcibly into her room in the girl’s hostel where she is staying in Delhi, far away from her village. Geeta in a state of shock does not know how to react to this intrusion, whether to greet and entertain the Bhaiya she knows or look into his lustful eyes and resist it. She realizes what is happening to her only when this big man uses all his force to physically overpower her, vent his momentary passion accompanied by brutality and violence. He then asks her to keep mum, wears his clothes and makes a quick exit. He never returns or picks up her calls, even when she frantically calls him up to tell him about her pregnancy.

Filled with shame, guilt, helplessness and hopelessness Geeta tries to end her life but the vibrant energy giving her life, overpowers each time. She then faces the world with a silence greater than death. Nine months of torment, pain, helplessness and being ostracized? While some of us privileged women when pregnant wake up each day filled with warmth, hope and tender love, Geeta woke up to her burden each day for 9 months. We have people, who indulge us, feed us but Geeta had no one in her tiny room. How many more men would have lusted at her vulnerability in such a situation?

Why and when does passion become unbridled lust?

The hospital insisted on knowing the name of a man who had a 2-minute role to play in the whole scheme of things? On the other hand, Geeta a young girl carried the whole show on her frail shoulders in solitary silence but in turn gets humiliated, insulted and tormented in the hospital while she waits to have a glimpse of the child, she gave birth to.

Today, I am overwhelmed, proud and filled with gratitude to say Geeta has flowered into a lovely young girl putting this whole episode behind her – or at least trying to. With the help of some ministers of God she is continuing her education and thriving in her new job. Her feet are light and nimble, she has a pair of wings, and she is ready to embrace life in its fullness. Each time she hugs me I hope I can take away any remnants of her past and pain.

Somewhere close or far away her baby is growing up and bringing joy to his family.