Eyewitness and hearsay- autobiographical notes

 

Eye witness and Hearsay1 These are autobiographical notes which I hope to post serially. 

Happy Birthday

It was my eldest aunt, the garrulous Aunt Kannan who almost “lost” one of her babies in the Maternity ward of what was then the Cambell’s Hospital in Calcutta. What the details were of that oft heard tale I cannot tell because I never really listened. I mention it here only because I think it decided for my father that he was going to have his babies delivered at home.

Home delivery in those day could only mean babies and so I, like my sister Puss the year before, were “delivered” at home. Intellectual films in black and white will depict “home delivery” in terms of a cleaned-out cattle shed, cattle ruminating in the mists, wide eyed children up at dawn and the sudden wail of a newborn infant but it was not always like that. “Bundobast” is an onomatopoeic Hindustani word which means not just organization but bustling organization and my father, despite his dhoti, Punjabi and pump shoes of a thorough Bengali gentleman, was a formidable bundobast man. For my birth at home, as with my sister’s, my parents’ bedroom was converted into the delivery room, the coal fired ovens in the kitchen were supplemented by the great but unsung Indian “appropriate technology” design the “tola unun” and further supplemented by two Primus pump stoves -with silencers you may wish to note - right outside the delivery room. I dare say if my mother had given birth to a quintuplet of twins perhaps there would have been no shortage of hot water. There was also an oxygen cylinder and mask hired out from B.C. Coondoo and Sons the big dispensing Chemists and Druggists who had their large shop at the nearby Bazaar. There was also two petromax lantern by F. Racek which for some reasons was locally known as Hajak, in case the lights went out- which never did of a six-month interval but that was Father all over.

On the personnel side there was an Anglo- Indian midwife -a prim women grey of hair and blue of eyes who is enshrined by my family’s balladeers as a mem – an English woman -and of course, my grandmother herself. I count in Grandmother because she had delivered around eight children some of them, as a young woman, in remote whistle stop railway stations of the old EIR in Bihar of the 1910’s and still remained spry, cheerful and active. What she had forgotten about natal care was more than what many girls would ever learn. There was of course Dr. Sudhir Ghosh LMF. a year junior to my father at the local school but a close family friend. with his brown leather doctor’s bag, firm of jaw and fair of face and he was reputed locally that if there was tussle between Jom , the colloquial Bengali God of Death and Sudhir Ghosh it was bad luck for Jom. In this case, he was more as a back up to a backup because maternity and child birth it was firmly believed best left as far as possible to females. The herds of elephants of course knew it from the dawn of time.

As happens when you are overprepared none of all that preparation was needed. The birth was absolutely uneventful so much so that even my mother was surprised when they told her I was out. Though she was properly Victorian in matters gynae she un-bended enough, when I was in my late teens, to tell me “You gave me no trouble at all” as if I had anything to do with it at all. The fact is that I had what is locally called as a henray matha -i.e. a cookpot of a head so I think it was more due to her being in her early twenties, and though slim was of immensely good health and that Puss, my sister had been born the year before.

When my grandmother rushed to give the happy tidings the family men folk, I do not know whether they scratched themselves but they told each other “We know-ed by the bellows that it be a bull”. In moments of happy emotion like this our men liked to pretend they were still simple country folk living in Shyamdasbati the family homestead named after our ancestor, in rural Burdwan.

My mother was of course relieved that she had delivered the desired male child though I cannot believe it would have really mattered. My father must have been happy too but he insisted that the new lad would take away attention from his daughter, my sister Puss but I am sure others would have seen through that. Dr. Ghosh contribution- though it may not have been just then because children were never named any time soon after birth because that would be tempting fate, infant mortality being what it used to be then. He gave me my name but apparently could never remember it and in later years when attending to me on house visits would address me as “Bapi” which is as generic an address as “laddie” -much to the amusement of my mother who would always remind him of the fact.

There was one last detail I must include though I half don’t believe it myself because it is so unusual. I can’t of course vouch for the truth it myself being, you will understand otherwise occupied-it being, for me, a rather eventful day. It seems that I had been cleaned up and swaddled by the nurse I opened my eyes and looked at my Grandmother and said “Ogo”. That had the old dear girl in tears because “ogo” is the call sign between comfortably married couples and she thought it was her dear Charu Babu her gentle and kindly husband, dead these last twelve years come back once again to her irresistible charms. As long as she lived, she simply believed that I was “HE” and it affected the way she treated me or spoke to me.  Whilst she doted on my sister Puss as the first born of her eldest son, towards me she had the tart affection one has for a beloved imposter who is found out but would not admit his true identity.