HOPE AGAINST HOPE

By the time you read this article, Nadia, a foundling, will be off to Primary section of one of the best Schools of the city. The headline “Newborn bitten to death by dogs in Guwahati” in Telegraph India on January 16, reminded me of her. It has been almost half a decade I first heard of her.

A middle aged man was on his usual stroll on a foggy morning of a cold December, 5 years back. Except for a few street dogs pulling on a branded plastic bag, nothing was unusual. He overheard two child rag-pickers engaged in a very serious conversation about the bag. He stopped dead in tracks as soon as he heard that they had seen an infant in the bag. He rushed back and shooed the dogs away.

The street dogs had pulled the baby out of the layers of cloth she was wrapped in and dragged her some distance. The infant was wrapped in a bed sheet and by looking at the cloth and the packet she was wrapped in, she seems to have belonged to a well-to-do family. The canine had sunk teeth into soft flesh. The blood stained, wounded infant was rushed to the authorities and hospital. She spent some weeks in neonatal intensive care while she recuperated, although medics had no hope of her survival.

Nadia, as her name signifies “hope against hope” survived. She survived the bitter December cold and the multiple canine bites, starving and all alone. She was christened Nadia by her adoptive father, the man who rescued her. Over 5 now, she casts her white magic wherever she goes be it school or malls or acquaintances. All she does is shake her Rasna-girl-like ponytail and flash her ear-to-ear wide grin.

But all abandoned infants are not fortunate enough as Nadia. Like the infant found in Guwahati last month, who succumbed to injuries on way to hospital. In both the occasions mentioned above sex selective abandonment with intention of homicide was suspected. This along with sex selective abortions has become a significant social phenomenon in several parts of India transcending all castes, class, communities and even the North South dichotomy.

According to a report in International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences January 2006, it was found that out of 8,000 foetuses aborted in six city hospitals 7,999 foetuses were of girls. N. Desai in “Born to die” (1988) reported that female infanticide was so widespread in Jadeja (Rajput) families of Kutch and Saurashtra that only five of such families were found who had not killed their ‘new-born’ daughters.

A series of government circulars banned the sex determination tests from 1977 onwards. But this attitude is rooted in a complex set of social, cultural, and economic factors. It is the dowry system, lack of economic independence, social customs and traditions that have relegated the

female to a secondary status. The degree may vary but the neglect of the girl child

and discrimination goes hand-in- hand and it requires a lot more than orders, laws and circulars from the government to be eliminated.

A DOLL DIES

How else will you describe a miniature Snow White? For that is what she was, an over-sized doll with blood red lips, milky white complexion and delicate black hair same as the narration of a fairy tale. She might have weighed a little over 10 pounds and must have breathed her last some hours ago, when she was alive and born out of real womb.

 It was just an ordinary morning, a decade back, of second professional of my Degree in Medicine. Visiting a morgue, at least once, was compulsory part of Forensic Medicine Syllabi. I deliberately delayed and made every attempt to escape the horror till the last day. This isolated building was the most horrid part of the city’s biggest hospital. An eager throng was surging to and fro. Men were crowding and elbowing each other. Few relatives wailed sitting on the tiny platform outside the main hall .Darkness of death was palpable all around.

The odour of formalin and stench of rotten flesh filled my lungs. There were jars, big and small, all around with dust as thick as emulsion coat over them and viscera carefully preserved within them. In the centre was a large examination table which was used for dissection, examination, investigation or whatever. Knives, blades, chisels, forceps, scissors of different sizes and shapes were neatly stacked nearby. Along with my professor and a male colleague we were accompanied by a dark, bare-torsoed, undertaker type person, straight from a late night horror show, a morgue attendant.

My eyes fell on the bodies that were lying on the side tables. One of an old man, a middle-aged male and there was this doll. I could no longer concentrate on the cirrhotic liver or gun shot wounds of the two other bodies.  I went closer and made the flies fly that greedily hovered around her.  “She will not wake up dear”, my colleague made a callous remark. Oh! She was dead. It was then I noticed her maggot filled wound on her left cheek. The realization of her being a corpse brought me back to my senses. Up till then she appeared to be deep in tranquil sleep.

The Prof started his narration on the next specimen.She was found abandoned, next to a heap of garbage, by ragpickers, who reported to police. She was strangled soon after birth by a pajama string or a thin nylon rope. There was a deep and thin scarlet groove encircling her short chubby neck. The big lacerated wound on the back of her head revealed that she was thrown against a wall, probably to be dumped. Later, while lying over the litter her left cheek was bitten by carnivore or a rodent. Her umbilical cord hung loosely from abdomen like a grown ascaris. I felt my intestines churn.

I gathered nerves to launch my volley of questions to Prof as to what must have been the cause of this and if he was sure about infanticide. He assured me that this was not the first time he saw or dealt with the murder of new born, always a girl. This case according to him was better than the rest as the body and genitalia hadn’t been mutilated and were fairly recognizable. Since in our country pre-natal sex determination is banned some people resort to such barbaric ways to get rid of girl child.

Her body lay cold and defunct before me, now pulverised by autopsy .I remember having read that a millennia and half back in Saudi Arabia baby girls were buried alive. It seems all the scriptures, laws and conventions still haven’t been able to change mindsets of few. My first and last visit to the morgue was from frightening, horrifying to one the most memorable days of my life. The whole episode had a neurotoxic effect on my system. I went into a state of mental paresis not being able to decide whether to rejoice at my survival or wail for a death. Celebrations of International Women’s Day no longer interested me.