One Night

Lindsay Barnes.

It was the summer of 1994. I was fast asleep on the roof, under the stars, along with my family of my two small children and their father, Ranjan, when we heard a knock on the door below. In those days any disturbances in the night were never for me, but for Ranjan: some dispute or the other in the village.

I only got callers during the day. I’d been living in this village for four years by then. After completing my PhD from JNU in 1990 I’d relocated to this village in Jharkhand (or Bihar as it was then) to join Ranjan who had been here for several years by then, teaching in a local college. I’d been involved in writing and research, having children – one in 1990 and another in 1993, and building a house to live in.

But that knock woke me up for more than one night. It was a group of boys from the village. “My didi (elder sister) is having a baby – but it’s not coming out,” said Fulchand. “Please come and do something,” he pleaded. I tried to explain that I knew little about childbirth (except my own personal experience of it!), and tried to persuade them to call someone else, or go somewhere else. The group failed to get convinced: the elderly woman of the village who was usually called for births was attending a marriage in another village; the traditional midwife refused to attend night births these days due to old age; the local Primary Health Centre was closed in the night.

Fulchand also had no money to spend on hiring a vehicle or going anywhere else. “Just go and see her,” Ranjan urged, realising that villagers can be incredibly persistent. So off I went with my book, “Where There is No Doctor”. When I entered the hut there was a collective sigh of relief from around five other women there. “Ah, Masterin has come. Everything will be alright now” one of them said. I knew, as did they, that I knew little of childbirth, that they definitely had more experience and knowledge than I did. But they were desperate. And I did not argue with or contradict them at the time.

Fortunately the birth was uneventful. The baby was born soon, and cried lustily. Mother had no problems either – that I knew of. The room was dark inside, there was no electricity in those days, and we managed a bit of light from the wick lamp. Consulting the relevant pages of my book I managed to tie and cut the cord.

In the afternoon I returned to Fulchand’s house to see how mum and baby were, and they were fine. There were several elderly women in the courtyard, and I asked them what they did when any complication arose during childbirth, where did they go, who did they call? They shrugged and were silent.

Shocked by their response I called a meeting of all the village women. Over fifty women crowded into our courtyard and I asked them all the same question. None of them had any answer.

In search of answers we started. It took just one night to start the search.