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Varsha Bhosle

Son-burned

The trouble with children is that they are not returnable

-- Quentin Crisp

The most devoted of parents will hesitate to brush aside Mr Crisp's reflection when imprisoned with a howling infant on even the shortest of flights. One can't open the windows to disperse the faint odour of vomit that it transmits to all in proximity; one can't boo the mom into stepping out (as is done in cinemas); and one can't avoid the captive audience in order to commit the only remaining alternative, ie, strangulating the source of noise. Instead of prohibiting smoking in aircraft, why don't airlines ban everything under 13 years (except scotch, of course)? And that holds true for restaurants and theatres, as well.

Even so, my protests are directed more towards parents than their offsprings. After all, the little horrors didn't specifically request to be born and brought up the way they frequently are. Many a time have I stood frozen-still when a gluey infant has been foisted in my reluctant arms, while the mother proudly clucked, "Give auntie a pappi." I've had to mollify a string of mummyjis offended by my obvious distaste to the saliva dripping off my cheeks...

To be fair, the child itself probably hates the smooching even more than the smoochee does. I'm convinced that it obliges the mommy since it has learnt the wisdom in getting it over with quickly. For some strange reason, parents genuinely believe that their little darlings evoke the same joy, admiration and wonder in all and sundry. Alas, if only that were so.

If parental delight were a matter of a few months, I could grin and bear it. Unfortunately, it does not wane with the passing years. It multiplies. After the hapless dinner guest has admired the inscrutable crayoned stick-figures of the budding Picasso, it's time to appreciate its musical genius, as demonstrated in Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Soon, the guest graduates to absorbing the marvels of natural wit and grace -- captured for posterity in happy-birthday/picnic-day home videos. A little later, the brilliance of young Einstein puts paid to any hope of a civilised conversation. This is how old friendships invariably die.

The fixation that Indians have for descendants of their own flesh- and-blood escapes me completely. I've never understood this supposedly primeval instinct to produce a string of beings in one's own image. A desire to live on after one's death, as it were. Considering that what India needs least is a battalion of newly-borns, I'm amazed by the irresistible urge to procreate in even the highly educated and otherwise perfectly reasonable people... Some plead that they simply love children. In which case, adoption should fit the bill -- thereby helping a bereft soul, as well as easing the population crisis.

Adoption? Whoops! That's the sticky wicket of Nature versus Nurture. For, in his casteist little heart, no Asian believes in parvarish alone. Frankly, if a man's hairline is preordained by his genetic pool, and nothing short of grafting can ever alter it, why are his brain cells exempt from the rule? I vaguely remember reading that a certain combination of chromosomes (double XX and Y, or something like that) indicates a propensity to aggression which often leads to criminal behaviour. Then why is it Nazi of me to suspect the genetic make-up of a child...?

I remember once spending six harrowing months trying to teach the ten-year-old son of my bai the Marathi alphabet: We never, not once, progressed beyond the first ten consonants. I shudder to think what I'd have done if a terminally stupid child was my lot in an adoption. In any case, the playing at teacher-teacher with Little Moron put an end to any idea I might have had of a blind adoption or a Mia Farrow-like Earth Mother-ness. But then again, I'm not as progressive and enlightened as the north Europeans and Americans.

Mothers-in-law, particularly, are the bane of every marriage (for once, Hindi films aren't very off the mark in their depiction of this phenomenon). Before the couple has any chance to get properly acquainted, the demands for the khandan ka chiragh begin. I suspect that most of us have been brought into this world simply to forestall the carping from this quarter. Your neighbourhood delinquent often will be the fruit of grandma's excessive adoration.

Once the baby arrives, it's Diwali everyday. But beware! that's just a stepping stone to the end of togetherness and, paradoxically, even individuality. The hoarding and saving mentality of us Indians is legendary, anyway: No sooner is a girl born that dahej is assiduously collected (and don't let anybody tell you otherwise). A boy, OTOH, heralds future donations for medical or engineering college. Forever gone is the stuff of which sweet nothings were made -- those post-honeymoon trips, the spontaneous gift, the instant weekend... Nor are we like Westerners who never even think of restraining their own lifestyles to build a legacy for Junior -- who strains to fly the coop when barely out of his teens!

The problem is that, here, women conceive because it's the "right" and expected thing to do. Or, worse, because there is nothing better to do. Or, worst of all, to bind the husband more firmly by the apron strings. For the majority, there's no premeditation behind such a weighty decision. The concept that a high quality of life and the mutual happiness of the husband and wife are fundamental to sustain a child, is alien to Indians. Such a view is automatically put down as "selfish materialism" (we do have a way of getting back at the West). Anyway, the outcome usually is a repressed resentment for lost opportunities against the spouse. There's no escape from regrets -- for all those sacrifices made in the pink of life for someone who, in the end, never does appease carefully laid down schemes. Show me a father content with Junior's choices and I'll show you pigs that fly.

I don't want to open the Pandora's box of Son versus Daughter: The two are equal in ability and both equally unnecessary. Nor will I stoop to comment on the dictates of religion -- any religion: I presume my readers are rational beings. The best one I've heard is that a Hindu needs a son for the last rights of Agni. And, the less vented about Allah ki den, the better. Suffice to say that the addendum from the next Messiah will be: Thou shalt always use prophylactics.

The fact remains that as the minds of its peoples broaden with education, the population growth of an advanced nation steadily declines. Western psychologists say that it is the pace of life, the pressure of work conditions in the modern world that disturbs mating habits. ROTFL! The theory presumes that either the Indian male knows no pressure, or, that he is best evolved to, er, thrive in tension. Unlike the bulk of Indians, the Yank at least has the privacy of his own house, for heavens sakes!

The way I see it, the Westerner has no compulsion to leave behind a Xerox of the self. Swedes, Norwegians, Dutch, Swiss prefer to adopt infants from Third World countries to making their own babies. I trace it thus: Mass education leads to skilled labour: leads to industrialisation: leads to prosperity: leads to monetary security: leads to more leisure: leads to time for philosophising: which frequently leads to philantrophy. In the US, the population explosion is restricted to Blacks, Hispanics and Asians. I needn't add that these races are not exactly those that control global economy and finance -- at least of the legal kind.

With the arrival of cable television in our home, I found that the programmes which most shocked my folks were neither Madonna on MTV nor Karisma on Zee. It was Donahue and Oprah that swept the dhurrie from right under their feet. The let-it-all-hang-out discussions were rude eye-openers for this lost generation. The subjects of two different films on the Beeb were, the plight of children sexually and physically abused by parents, and whether incest between consenting adults should be decriminalised. After the expected "Shiv-Shiv," "Kaliyug," my mother, for the very first time in her life, conceded that, perhaps, parenthood has been over-glorified in our culture. Individual perversities apart, she accepted that simply giving birth does not amount to motherhood.

Indians smugly cling to the idea that Sodom and Gomorrah only exist in the West. That's what we also thought about crack and AIDS. Any social worker will put the record straight by recounting the number of child-abuse cases from our villages, forget our sinful cities. I am not suggesting that every parent is a potential abuser: My point is that such cases belie the axiom of instinctive parental inclination and guardianship. It has to be consciously striven for.

That everyone's born with a wholesome maternal or paternal instinct, is a myth. I, for one, have never felt a stir in my bosom at the sight of an infant, however enchanting. Nor am I making some saintly sacrifice for the country by electing to stay loose. We are here today and gone tomorrow -- why *must* I leave behind a part of me to add to the dismal clutter? No, it's not a Freudian handicap: I do not dislike children per se -- I'd just rather they were older. Perhaps, maybe, someone with a bit of me and a bit of him would not be a terrible thing to bring into this world. But, is this world a fit enough place for it?

Varsha Bhosle