And she was a mother too....

"Amma, Lakshmi akka fell there, run fast" shouted sharadamma, the maid at house.

The whole house rushed like a storm to the kitchen, Mr. Varadrajan shouting to call doctor- his wife was expecting a baby and doctor had confirmed the date of delivery in a day or two.

The father-in-law called the doctor, while shanthi, the only girl kid of Varadrajan and lakshmi stood in the corner , looking at everything around with daunted wet eyes and a pumping heart. Her mother is not well , there is something wrong, dad is crying."Don't worry , you are going to have a little brother to play with" consoled the maid and hugged Shanthi.

Ambulance came, they all rushed in, with the Mother-in-law sitting beside the stretcher on which Lakshmi was lying, crying with the pain and clinching on the stained sheet covering the stretcher. Varadrajan was panting and querying every moment with his mother "Is she alright?, do you need anything?, do not worry we will be reaching soon..damn this traffic!!"

There was a silence in the corridor, the father in law was walking restlessly back and forth, Varadrajan was resting on the wooden bench with his eyes resting on the roof and his mother resting on his shoulders. There were prayers going on in all their hearts and wait for the joyous moment was just too restless.

"COngratulations, Mr. varadrajan.. you are blessed with a little cute angel, you can walk in and see the baby in some time". Varadrajan thanked the nurse and rushed to his dad, he hugged him and whispered in his ears - it's a baby girl , we are blessed.

The father in law had his heart thumping like he is going through a downward swing on a gaint wheel. He knew his wife is going to be disappointed. she was expecting a boy who will take her generation ahead. but, who can question the wish of the almighty. He walked to his wife , hold her by shoulders and said - you need to be strong, it's a girl!

The mother in law was stoned , she closed her eyes, thanked god for the unkown and plunged into the woooden chair kept aside.
Varadrajan was near his wife, he took the angel in her hand like any proud father and whisphered - "Thank you God, I am a blessed father".

Both the parents moved in one by one and assured the wellness of the baby and the mother and were congratulated by the staffs there.
It was 3 in the noon , Varadrajan was busy walking on the corridor , talking to his friends and relatives and spreading the news about the proud moment. His father had gone to get some eatables from outside.

Shanti, the kid , was playing with the polybags lying on the floor and her grandma was sitting by the side of her mother Lakshmi.
Lakshmi was lying on the bed with swollen dried eyes and her weak body, she had brought a new life to this world and closed her eyes to relax like the mother earth.
The new born baby suddenly started crying, Lakshmi slowly parted her eyes, things were hazy around, she could see her mother in law holding the baby in her hand , she could hear the old lady trying to pacify the baby and Lakshmi, the weak mother could not hear the crying of the baby for a while, there was silence around , she opened her eyes to see again a hazy view. A view of the baby girl burying her head into her grandma's breasts. Lakshmi's heart pumped, she opened her eyes, she cried with no voice coming from her throat, her mother in law was feeding the baby. Lakshmi knew what the old lady was doing, she was helpless, tears rolling down her eyes, she felt a small hand touching her arms as if it was asking for help, Lakshmi was twisting in the bed, so was the baby.

The baby gasped for a while and then abated for eternity.
The grandama had fed her little angel with some milk laced with yerakkam paal (the poisonous juice of the oleander plant)

In the corner, Shanti the girl kid was standing with her eyes looking at her mother who had just given a life to this world and another mother who had taken a life ...life of another mother ... had she survived!


The above story is based on a cruel tradition prevalent in Tamilnadu and many other states in India. The purpose is the make people aware of girl infanticide issue and encourage them to take an action towards it.

Note: The oleander plant yields a pleasant flower,but also a milky sap that, if ingested, can be deadly poison. It's one of the methods families use to kill newborn girls. "Female infanticide" is the intentional killing of baby girls due to the preference for male babies and from the low value associated with the birth of females." In some part of rural India, the centuries-old practice of female infanticide can still be considered a wise course of action.
In the nearly 300 poor hamlets of the Usilampatti area of Tamil Nadu [state], as many as 196 girls died under suspicious circumstances [in 1993] ... Some were fed dry, unhulled rice that punctured their windpipes, or were made to swallow poisonous powdered fertilizer. Others were smothered with a wet towel, strangled or allowed to starve to death...(The Source of the information in the note section is relief project website)

Being a prisoner in India: The story of Jails

When we think of a Jail, we visualize one of the scenes from those retro bollywood movies with a dark room where the inmates are neatly dressed in a striped attire, there is a huge space behind those walls where people do stone hammering and also sing and fight. The atrocity which is shown on the reel is mostly inhuman behavior of the Jailer, sometimes even funny when the jailers are ‘Angrezon ke zamane ke jailer’. The reality is different and more ‘inhuman’.
The real jails are a 10’x10’ room with toilet instilled in the same space, a bunch of weak, delirious people with some disturbing sad stories. There is an acute lack of hygiene and a dearth of even basic requirements to live. The jails are overcrowded, as clean as a stable of horses and inhouse a number of people who are trail cases and waiting for their luck to take a turn. A few are abandoned, a few say they are not guilty, then there are women prisoners who face a different degree of stigma and humiliation.
In India, We still follow Prisoner’s act of 1894. The application of a century old law in the changed socio-political scenario is absolutely bizarre, and is out of tune with the entirely transformed picture of human society. During the past some decades several organizations, intellectuals and committees set up for jail reforms have expressed their views on the importance of reviewing the Act which is not comprehensive.
Overcrowding is a huge problem, the number of inmates on an average in a jail in India is 3 times of the capacity.
Below are the figures from National Informatics centre for year 2003, and the situation has worsen since then. I am sure we should atleast know of this fact, write about them and ideally act on them.

• Total Number of Jails in the country : 1,140
• Total Capacity of Jails in the country : 2,33,543
• Total Number of Jail Inmates : 3,26,519
• Male : 3,13,739 (96.1%) Female : 12,780 (3.9%)
• Convicts : 91,766 (28.1% of total inmates) Undertrial Prisoners : 2,17,658 (66.7% of total inmates)
• Male : 96.3% of total convicts Male : 96.5% of total undertrials
• Female : 3.7% of total convicts Female : 3.5% of total undertrials
• The highest number of 50,531 inmates (49,410 male : 1,121 female) were reported from
Uttar Pradesh (15.5%) followed by Bihar 37,323 (36,274 male : 1,049 female) at the end
of the year 2003.
• 339 Women Convicts with their 334 children and 1,132 Women undertrials with their
1,131 children were reported in the country.
• The highest number of Graduate and Post Graduate Convicts were reported from Punjab (648) and Uttar Pradesh (137) respectively at the end of the year 2003.
• Murder alone accounted for 58.6% of the total Convicts under IPC Crimes.
As they say, we should kill crime not the criminal that too this way!