THE MIDWIFE HARISH MANGALAM N the embankments of the inlets of Sabarmati, the lush greenery of trees filled the eyes. The sun had just risen to become a red ball in the sky. A mere glance at the village from the embankments was rewarding. A serene tranquility prevailed everywhere as peasants from Ambedkar colony in the village left for the fields in small groups for the day's work. Only school-going children and old men and women remained at home. The colony was virtually the abode of peace. Benima spent the whole of the day in the dark, stiffling attic where mangoes were stored. She sorted the mangoes and kept them in separate piles; the good ones on one side and the bird- bitten ones on the other. The bird-bitten mangoes were, of course, cheap and were mostly bought by the Dalits of the village. Those mangoes which were too bad to sell, Benima gave away to little children. Benima’s skill in sorting mangoes was matched by her prowess as a midwife. The mothers of the village never tired of extolling her virtues in this regard. More than two decades had passed after the death of Kalabha. Since then, Benima had been wasting away her life in the dark attic where only the thin rays of the sun entered through the holes in the roof. During the mango season, the whole of her time would be spent in sorting mangoes, mangoes of all types: raw, ripe, sweet, sour, watery, bird-bitten .... As she turned the small raw mangoes in her hand she would think of her childhood and youth. The bird-bitten mangoes would bring her back to her age-withered state a start. Like the peels of66/INDIAN LITERATURE : 159 bird-bitten mangoes, her skin too had turned dark, rough and wrinkled. Benima was sorting mangoes in the attic when Dali Patlani came running down the street and stopped in front of Benima’s house. “~Benima, O, Benima!”, she called. She was panting. “Oh, Dali, you! What happened?”, Benima was out in a trice. “Benima ... Pashima, my sister-in-law is in labour. We called Dr. Paresh Patel. But he just gave her an injection and went away. Told us there was nothing to worry and that the baby would be delivered in two hours. But it’s four hours now. She has not delivered the baby. Her pain has not gone away either. Benima, please come with me, quick!” Benima, as usual, did not waste a second. Adjusting the folds of her dress, she ran with Dali. There were about half-a- dozen women standing with bated breath around the cot on which Pashi lay. Manek Doshi, Pashi’s mother-in-law told Benima what had happened. Benima felt Pashi’s pulse and turned to Manek Doshi with fire in her eyes. “The pestilence upon you, you harlot! She’s in such a state and you went on waiting like an idiot! | don’t know how you lived till middle-age with your ignorance! Her hands are so cold and yet you didn’t know what was wrong! Look, you fool, aren’t you ashamed to give such a beautiful daughter-in-law to death?” Benima was so deft and clever that even learned doctors with high-sounding qualifications were no match to her. She was not a MS or a MD. But she was a repository of experience. Not for her the tall prescriptions which would make the relatives of the patients sick! Whenever there was a delivery to be attended, Benima would be at the woman's beside, day and night. Her fees consisted of a single coconut! “Move aside, you fools!’, Benima shooed away everyone except Manek Doshi and closed all the windows. Pashi was in severe pain. Benima lifted her from the cot and laid her gently on the floor. Pashi groaned and struggled violently. She could not bear it any more. Each moment weighted down heavily on her. Her husband, Baldev stood outside, his heart in his mouth. With intent eyes, he stared at the ventilator of the room, straining his ears for any sound from inside.HARISH MANGALAM/67 “Benima’, implored the frightened Manek Doshi, “Only you can save my Pashli. It was a miscarriage last time. Ifit happens this time too ..., Manek Doshi sobbed. “Don't worry, Manek Doshi. What did that scoundrel of a doctor say?” Benima tried to change the subject. “The doctor asked me what was wrong with her.” “It doesn’t need a doctor to ask that’, Benima’s expression changed as she made no attempt to hide her dislike for the doctor. “And he took that long tube like an elephant’s trunk, put the forked ends in his ears and pressed the other end on her chest’, Manek Doshi rambled on, “Said the baby had stuck to the womb. He tried to comfort us by saying that the injection will help her to deliver the baby quickly. He then pocketed his fifty rupees and left.” Manek Doshi let out a sigh. “Benima, Bhagwan will bless you. Save her, somehow!” “Manek, don’t worry about anything. Everything will be all right.;’ Thus Benima engrossed in her task kept the lamp of care and confidence burning in her heart. For those who were outside, life hung in the precarious thread of anxiety. Baldev’s eyes darted across the drooping slopes of the roof. Painful memories were brought back to him. If the first delivery had been proper, the child would have been quite grown up now. Pashli would not have had to go through all the excruciating pain and tension. Will the long-awaited moment end in glorious celebration? Or will it be caught in the dragnet of tomorrow's uncertainties? Only the thin beams of the sun fell nonchalantly through the holes in the roof. Suddenly the whole atmosphere went into a lilting dance in celebration of the moment it waited for. Oohan, oohan ... the first cries of the infant beat time for the dance. It was a boy—brought to the world by the tender, loving hands of Benima. Pashi was still unconscious. Tears of gratitude from Manek Doshi’s eyes fell at the feet of Benima. Opening the windows with a crack, Benima announced the glad news to all. She then asked Baldev to give her a coconut and turned sternly to the excited women who were now streaming into the room. “You worthless harlots! Don’t do anything like this anymore. Let children die in my house, | don’t mind. But if anything happens to any one of you, don’t hesitate to call me.”B/INDIAN LITERATURE © 159 One day as Benima was selling mangoes, she saw Pashi and her son coming along the street. “Pashli!”, she called Pashi affec- tionately. Pashi acknowledged her greeting. Benima asked Pashi how her son was doing. The boy was now a year and a half old. “Le, le, le ... ”, Benima beckoned him near. The child, demon- strating his new acquired skill of walking, stumbled towards Benima. Suddenly Pashi stiffened. Rushing towards him, she stop- ped him in his tride. “Dear, don’t touch Benima!”” Benima’s hands, extended towards the child, suddenly hung, lifeless in the air, as if struck by a stroke of lightning. The picture of Pashi, supine on the floor, groaning in pain came rushing into her mind ... “4t’s all right, my girl. I've seen him well." Benima withdrew into the cowshed and ‘poured out some tea from the kettle on the stove. Dali, Rubhi and Manju, the girls in the neighbourhood, their curiosity aroused, had watched the scene. “Look, there goes Benima. It’s Pashi’s luck that she escaped death. Pashi herself used to say that the offering made to Ramkabir did it.” The poison of ‘luck’.and ‘offering to Ramkabir’ polluted the innocent minds of the good wives of the village. ‘Luck’ and ‘offering to Ramkabir’ went around like ghosts, haunting the villagers as the heavy hand of time fell on Benima’s skill and deftness. : Benima was going on her round of the village, carrying the basket of mangoes on her head. On the way, beneath the shade of a banyan tree, some little boys were playing. As Benima pas- sed, they shouted at her, “‘Hey, you scavenger woman, go away. You'll pollute us. Can’t you look where you're going?” “Son, I’m far enough”, Benima replied meekly. Benima’s dim eyes gave her only a blurred picture. But as she screwed them up and shaded them from the sun, she reco- gnised Daylo, Dali’s son. Benima said to herself, only to herself: “Death had almost got him ... four years ago .. | saved him.” In an instant all the miseries of the world descended on Benima. But as she stumbled on her exhausted feet, the weight of ages rolled away from her. She looked up at the sky. The sun was no longer a bright ball of light. Dark, terrifying clouds had enveloped it. Benima sighed. As she walked away, she heard a nut fall from the Banyan tree. To Benima it sounded like the snap of Daylo’s umbilical cord! a Translated from Gujarati by K.M. Sherrif