What should one do? Collapse in disbelief, feel flummoxed, wonder if so many of us have lost our marbles? Even if one belongs to the tribe that does not rush to judge, in this case, I think one would… Fine, IVF clinics have been mushrooming all over India, so much so that childless couples in America, Canada and England think India is the fertile ground for having babies. The cost of IVF procedures is next to peanuts, cheap as chips here, if they had to go through the arresting drill in their own country. And the likelihood of boarding a homeward bound plane, cradling a bundle of joy, a dream-come-true.
Indian doctors are still held in considerably high esteem, and in this symbiotic relationship, they but naturally, make hay while the sun shines, holidaying in the South of France with kitten and caboodle, when their bank accounts need to be flushed out a bit, lest their financial ledger starts showing a baby bump. However, before boarding the train leading us to the chosen port a brief detour…many, many years ago there was an article in The Tribune, I should think, since that was the newspaper prescribed in Simla, co-relating the fall in Indian men’s sperm count with more and more women entering the work force, striding shoulder to shoulder with the stronger sex. This turn-your-head-upside-down thesis alluding to men feeling emasculated, and so the 2% fall in their sperm sum. The laughable contention therefore was the need for fertility clinics to do the age-old job of the stork bringing in the baby. Enough introductory meandering, and now to dip this pen in that drop of ink that may make a million think, as goes the saying.
At the start of the month, with the telly in the lounge always tuned into some inane news channel, I instead of as usual going deaf on it, while scampering by to prevent some mindless carnivalesque visuals to scroll by, sickeningly heard a triumphant one-line announcement. A 74 year old woman gives birth to girl twins after 57 years of marriage. Her 82 year old husband, perhaps, so upbeat, suffered a heart attack the day after being declared “papa”. Rest assured, babies and Parents are doing fine. The miraculous birth by the 74 year old materialising via IVF. Her husband’s sperms were fertilised by a donor’s egg, and then implanted in the wife’s womb. Did I forget to mention that this happened on our very own bhoomi, Andhra Pradesh? To take the oxygen out of the story, how much more time would this couple have on earth? Five years, a few more, after which they would be leaving behind two orphaned children…and till they are alive would be battling with osteoporosis, cardiac attacks, not to sweep away other ailments accompanying old age, how do they intend to rock these newborns to sleep, feed them with formula…later to deal with their colicky crying, teething troubles.
If for 57 years they had longed and pined for a child, did adoption never cross their minds? And if they were averse to “raising a stranger” as their child, not knowing the antecedents of the birth mother’s womb, surely they could have become parents to one of their kith and kin’s offsprings. And why ever do we hail Yashodha Ma as Lord Krishna’s mother, despite her being his earth and not birth mother? And in this case, if this aged couple were suffering from a combined obsessive compulsive disorder of sowing and reaping their own fruit, whatever were the doctors, that were part of this “show”, thinking? They just wanting to add another figure to their IVF success rate? Quite apparently, I am hosing up the wrong fire since the medical fraternity seems to have shown no moral qualms post the birth and the parents appear to believe that, “All is well on earth and God is in heaven.”
I am more than sure, that if grandparents of the age of the newly-anointed parents were saddled with newborns, they would indignantly protest, informing their son or daughter to hire a baby sitter. This brings to mind Eliot’s lines, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, a time to die; a time to plant, a time to pluck.” Then for decades now there has become this “way of life” for many professional women wanting to reach the top of the corporate ladder or wherever, to freeze their eggs, and board the merry-go-round of motherhood after climbing Mount Everest-esque heights they had hankered after, aspired for. Once that is done, they decide to put to use those eggs while trying to shape their wrong side of 40-ish boyfriends, nagging them to stop sucking in their beer bellies to impress those twits manning the beer faucet, and give up happy hours to be supportive daddies-to-be. And if they do not tow the line, then these ladies, with the same grit practised in the boardroom, walk out of the relationship, to search high and low, for the perfect donor to produce a child with stunningly immaculate genes. Most of them do get their cake, that too, a double share, but imagine a 50-something woman in sweatpants kangarooing in a gunny sack for her kindergarten kid’s sports day; competing with moms in their early 30s. Who would be more embarrassed the child or the mother? And, of course, this is just the beginning of many awkward, discomforting ball games. What is it that drives us to do so—the delusion of hefty emotional returns in creating your “own” from your loins, your womb? The thirst to carry forth one’s own bloodline to attain proxy immortality of a kind?
I cannot dock this boat at its seaport without ending the journey with Khalil Gibran’s hermetic words: “Your children are not your children, They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.”
Dr Renée Ranchan writes on socio-psychological issues, quasi-political matters and concerns that touch us all