I had lost my child. He had been playing at the construction site where I worked. The company did not have a crèche and I had nobody to leave him with; all our support systems having been left behind in the village in Bihar, from where my husband and I had migrated. We were daily wage labourers. We were poor and I too needed to work, if we were to survive, in the big city of Mumbai. So we had to carry our child along. He was hardly ten months old, and had just started crawling. I was still nursing him, feeding him during breaks at work, the frequency and length of which were at the mercy of the contractors at the construction sites.

My baby had been playing at a little distance from a harmless-looking, makeshift, water tank, while I was on my way, with a pile of bricks on my head, to the 5th floor of the multistoried building that was being constructed. There was no reason for me to do so, but it was probably some motherly instinct that made me turn to see my baby precariously close to the edge of the water tank. I threw the bricks on the ground and raced down to save him. A young lad was standing nearby. I screamed at the top of my lungs, to draw his attention towards my child. The poor lad responded as fast as he could and jumped into the tank in a bid to save him. But alas it was too late. When I managed to finally reach the tank, which felt like an eternity, the boy was standing in the water tank, with my baby in his arms. The water came only up to his waist. But that level was enough to have drowned my baby. All attempts to revive him subsequently were in vain.

My child was my husband’s pet, an apple of his eye. He blamed me for losing him. He didn’t seem to comprehend that my sorrow was probably more than his. What does a man know of the bonding that happens between a woman and her child whom she carries for nine months inside of her before his bonding with him even starts? It never seemed to occur to him that it was his inadequacy at providing enough for us that I needed to divide my attention away from solely looking after the child. No, it was only my inadequacy at being a caring mother that we had lost our child, he seemed to say. Women can be their own worst enemies. Most of them, except a few, in our neighbourhood and workplace, seemed to blame me too.

There was now no love lost between my husband and me. I felt only his hate. He stopped making love to me, saying that he didn’t want to have children who I couldn’t take care of! He soon left me for another woman, ‘who would be a better mother to my children’ is how he justified it. I soon slipped into what I, now know, is called a ‘guilty mom syndrome’.

When you start owning a misfortune that has happened to you and believe that you are fully responsible for it, you stop feeling bad. You might regret it, you might wish you could turn the clock back but you don’t feel half as bad as when you believe somebody else is to blame. In that respect being brainwashed into believing that I was a ‘monster mom’ who had failed her child, actually worked for me. I stopped feeling tormented and carried on with my life alone.

But it wasn’t practically easy. I lost my job. The contractor, fearing a legal backlash because of the lack of a crèche mandated by law, fired me. I was finding it difficult to earn enough for even one square meal a day.

Then, a good Samaritan in the form of a woman, Chanda, living in the same slum as mine, introduced me to Dr Sudha and the world of surrogacy. The thought itself was frightening. But Chanda convinced me to open my mind to it.

“You only have to carry the child in your womb. Once it is born, they give it away to parents who have opted for this method to have a child, for they have been unable to have one, or don’t want to take the ‘trouble’ to have one!”

“But what if there are complications- like during childbirth or in the child itself ?” I had these and a whole hoard of questions and doubts about the entire process.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about a thing. Dr Sudha takes care of it all. She is a kind doctor and never lets her surrogate mothers down. I know so many women who rent their wombs through her. She runs a home just for them.”

She proceeded to explain the details of how, during the entire period of pregnancy, the women live in the surrogacy home where all their needs are taken care of – nutritious meals, medicines, clean surroundings and regular medical checkups. Even the delivery happens in the attatched hospital itself.

“And at the end of it all, you are paid handsomely for your service. The amount is more than you can ever earn even if you worked day in and day out during those nine months”.

Then I voiced the doubt foremost in my mind.

“Chanda, you know my problem. I am incapable of looking after a child. Look how I lost my child. What if the intended parents change their minds and don’t come for the baby?”

“Don’t worry about that score. The babies will not even be shown to you. You might not even meet the parents. Anyway, just come with me tomorrow. I’ll take you to Dr Sudha, who will explain everything to you.” said Chanda, coaxing me into accompanying her the next day.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it the whole night. Though strange, it looked like nothing could be more apt for me. It was becoming increasingly difficult to find jobs. Even if I did, keeping myself safe from the lecherous advances of the building contractors, once they realised that I was single, was proving to be a task in itself. This would not only keep me safe from such hawks in our society but would take care of all my needs, I figured to myself.

A single meeting with the matronly Dr Sudha was enough to enrol me. She indeed came across as, and, as I later realised, actually was, a genuinely kind and gentle soul. She managed to allay most of my fears.

I started with a bit of trepidation despite all the assurances, but when I was through with the process for the first time, there was no looking back. I plunged headlong into this life of surrogacy. I was young and my womb was fertile. When required to, I even sold my eggs and sometimes only rented my womb. I never felt fitter eating the most nutritious meals unlike ever before in my life. I also felt the satisfaction of bringing happiness to so many childless couples, almost at the rate of one couple per year!

Dr. Sudha was a God-send in my life. She was truly caring. I felt safe and secure under her wing. I, on the other hand, was also Dr Sudha’s most dependable and uncomplicated surrogate. I never got attatched to the living being inside me. This was not so with many of my ‘colleagues’. I often heard of other surrogate mothers not wanting to part with the baby after giving birth to it. This led to practical as well as psychological complications. This, fortunately or unfortunately did not happen with me. I felt lucky I could be so emotionally disconnected from the lives that I brought forth into this world.

Destiny, however, had other things in store for me.

Today, soon after I had delivered a baby, Dr. Sudha came to me and said, “The parents of the child that you just delivered, are foreigners and are held up in their country due to some visa problems. It might take a week or two before they can come to take their baby home. The baby will need to be in your care till then.”

I was paranoid! “I can’t look after the child!” I cried aghast. “You know me, madam. You know my inadequacy as a mother!”

“It’s only for a few days. I’m sure you can do this for me.” Saying this Dr.Sudha thrust a little bundle, wrapped in blue, into my arms. The baby is fair with pink cheeks and the bluest eyes that I have ever seen. As I look into them I feel myself drowning into a world that was strangely familiar and extremely comforting. What is stunning is the baby’s resemblance to my own child, who I had lost so long ago. Except for the colour of the skin and the eyes, which are a total contrast to the tribal hues of my lost child, the features are, uncannily, the same.

For this surrogacy, I had not even donated my eggs. I had only rented out my womb to the fertilized egg of the intended parents. How on earth did this happen?

I am non-plussed. It is nothing short of a miracle. As I put the child to my chest, I am sure this baby is a reincarnation of my lost child.

As I watch him sleeping in my arms, I feel convinced that it is my very own baby that has been restored to me.

But suddenly I break out of my reverie with a fear gripping my heart.

What happens when the intended parents do get their visas and come to claim their baby? No, not their baby. My baby! I break out into a sweat at the thought of losing my child yet again. I know I wouldn’t survive it a second time. Thoughts of that fateful day, so many years ago, come flooding back to my mind; thoughts of the day when my baby’s heart had stopped beating. It had felt so unnatural that mine had continued to beat. I have woken up every single day after that and felt a part of me missing. The grief just doesn’t go away! I could feel myself falling into that deep abyss of pain once again. But this time, I saw a ray of light. I was not going to let anything in the world snuff that light out, come what may!

But how? How will I refuse to part with the baby? After all, I was in it for the foreign couple. My conscience will not allow me to deprive them of the happiness that I had promised to deliver to them.

I decided to turn to Dr Sudha for help. She always had an answer. I shared my newfound joy as well as my predicament with her. I begged her to let me keep this baby. “I will bear another one for them, I promise” I implored.

“Relax, my dear child”, Dr Sudha replied. “I had lied to you about the couple not coming because of visa problems. In fact, they are not coming at all. They got divorced during the pendency of your pregnancy and now don’t want the baby anymore! They have rescinded the contract. In such circumstances, the baby is put up for adoption….”

Tears streamed down my cheeks as I hugged her with joy and relief. I had always worshipped her as my God ever since she turned my life around, so many years ago. Now I had even more reason to do so.

Remarks:

This is a fictional account of a utopian surrogacy centre being run conscientiously and ethically. Sadly, this was a rarity when commercial surrogacy was rampant in India. Surrogacy has now been banned since 2015 for foreigners and was totally banned by the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act of 2021; being allowed only for altruistic reasons.

Life-altering sums of money could be made through surrogacy, amounts that couldn’t be earned even after working day and night. They were used to establish a business, provide for the future of their families, educate their children, cover medical costs, or construct a sturdy house. If it is done out of free will by both parties, there is nothing wrong with it. Instead of a total ban, health and background checks of a surrogate, laws to support them, strict punishments in place for not abiding by the rules and regulations, specific insurance policies for surrogate mothers, and educating these women on the rights available to them, as well as the possible risks, are all ways to mitigate the perils of their exploitation.

Surrogacy laws in India have had difficulty striking a balance between the conflicting interests of its different stakeholders. On the one hand, the state has a responsibility to safeguard the interests of the unborn child and prohibit the surrogate’s exploitation, sometimes by their greedy husbands, the former being uneducated themselves. On the other hand, lies the right of women to control their own reproductive processes and the right of individuals to be parents. 

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