DEATH OF AN INFANT

DEATH OF AN INFANT

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH


On a cold November night I gave birth to a baby boy at a private hospital in Mangalore. The child was the first grandchild of my parents. I was under the care of Santosh's Professor of Gynaecology, an eminent name in South India.

Do not let nobody tell you that labour pain is a casual matter, it is not. Not that I had a difficult delivery, I did not. It was most normal, no two ways on that.

From the room I was in, I could view the sea and the rows of cedar trees with wind in their leaves. They would bend from waist onwards, all at the same time. I remember that the nights were cold and prussian blue. I also remember that I was not ready for the child. My son too was not ready for me. He could have sensed me. Perhaps. Just perhaps.

We struggled to adjust to each other. Clearly my mind was not with him, though to give where credit is due, I could say that he tried his best to draw his lifeline from me.

He died on the fifth day in his tiny crib, his nose bled. It was certified as cot death.

Since I am not ruled by perhapses, I cannot think up any number of thoughts on the same. It happened, that is all.

But I was not prepared by Santosh's reaction. His sorrow could not be assuaged. He wept like a child on my lap, we howled like sloppy children who were facing the biggest loss of their lives. But we were not to know all this while it happened.

Perhaps the tiny death brought us together like nothing else did.

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