"No influence is so powerful as that of the mother, she'll love you forever."
~24 years before
The pain of labour was a prison for her mind. In that jail cell of fear and confusion, the time passed without her being able to keep track. Her stomach tightened. She heard her scream without being aware of making it. She lay still as the medication was administered, waiting for the agony to subside. In times to come, she'd forget these moments as effectively as formatting a hard drive, but always she'd recall the love she felt for her baby, her precious child, one born in perfect love.
"Ah......! I cannot do this. Ahh," she cried out in immense pain when a sudden pang of the infliction penetrated against her sensitive part.
After a minute, an unanticipated, portentous silence fell across the white abode of the hospital room. The raucous breaths of the woman broke off, her hands went limp.
But the menacing silence was abruptly broken by the shrill cry of the newborn baby who was clad in the thick crimson red blood of her mother, her baby eyes still closed, her tiny palms fisted into baby folds.
A girl was born, and a woman too.
"Prerna, look, you got an Angel, Prerna?" the lady Doctor neared the patient and announced the joyous news to her for which she was excited from so long. Instead, she got no reaction out of the mother.
The mother named Prerna was just lying there with her tired eyes closed. The Doctor immediately held her wrist and checked the beats. And she found none. There was nothing. Her hands were frigid. She was dead.
The newly born woman was dead.
The doctor was traumatised. This was the first case of a mother's death in her life. How could she fail this case, how could God be so harsh to do something so unfortunate to a baby, how could he?
"I want the baby out of me, into my arms. I hate this state of silent lethargy, this waiting, I feel trapped. I want to zoom to winter, to early next year, to the birth."
The excited, cheerful voice of the dead mother started resonating in the ears of the doctor. She was still terror-stricken and too traumatised to even observe her surroundings. After a few minutes of mortifications and gloominess, she gave the instructions to the workers and cleaners to do the after-needed procedures that their hospital followed with the deceased.
"The mother is no more," the doctor had whispered sadly.
"Sister, take this baby in the baby care room. I've to talk to the family," the doctor nearly cried saying that when she saw the nurses bringing the innocent minutes-old baby who was busy staring at her surroundings with her doe-like eyes. On the way, she told the family about the mother's death. But she couldn't believe the fact that instead of mourning for their daughter-in-law's death, they were mourning because a girl was born!
"But the ultrasound report said that a boy was there in my wife's womb?" the husband of the deceased lady bellowed angrily.
"Sir, this hospital doesn't perform any such illegal things. And for the proof, a DNA test can always be conducted," the lady doctor was already tense and then these illiterate, greedy & obnoxious people who were getting on her nerves.
"We'll not accept this girl. She's not our blood," the mother-in-law of Prerna spoke harshly, looking with distaste at the newborn baby who was being carried by the nurses to another room.
The Doctor just kept quiet as now only a DNA test could shut the mouth of these filthy people and their fake obligations.
"I will take a DNA test. You people have to sojourn here till we say. And the dead body of your wife is also to be given to you. Also, you have to do some paperwork," the doctor again spoke in a stern tone & went away towards her cabin.
"How contemptible & despicable these people are!" the doctor told herself while entering her cabin.
****
"U...ya..i..i..n... U...ya...i..i..n..," the small one-hour old baby started crying out vociferously for her mother and also because of her hunger but no one was there to feed her, to stop her grieving as God did something very wicked to this baby. He took her mother's life in exchange for her brand-new life.
But see the predestination of this poor baby that when she just took the first whiff of air, her mother took the last gasp of her life.
"I told you, son! She was a grim omen. Her mother was a terrible omen too. See. Like mother, like daughter. Huh," the newborn baby's grandmother expectorated loudly giving no heed to her deceased daughter-in-law's soul.
"Yes. Ma. You're right. Even her mother was useless. She can't even bring me a scooter in dowry," the baby's father pronounced bitterly about his spouse without thinking twice that he had succumbed her just an hour ago.
"Don't worry, my son. I'll arrange your alliance with a well-off man's daughter. Then we'll get pretty substantial money and we can enjoy our life using that capital without having to do much work," the voracious granny discoursed greedily with a dash of cleverness in her orbs.
The man was glittering like a Cheshire cat at his mother's insidious plan, "You're so adroit and sagacious, Maa".
They discussed their cunning tactics without worrying about the hour-old baby who kept crying wistfully.
Maybe she also knew that her mother was no more. Maybe she also knew that there's no one to love her. Maybe she also knew that it was inscribed in her fate to be broken like this.
Maybe she also knew that she would only have pain written in her destiny.
"Maybe she's a girl, that's why her family members left this cute baby girl in this hospital as her mother is also no more," some nurses conversed amidst their sympathy and pity for the infant.
"Give her some solution milk," a nurse was magnanimous enough to say that, and then after that baby's paunch was full, she stopped her crying, drifting away in her slumber.
A place where there were Angels, God, and also her late Mother.
"It was a baby girl's tragic story; it was her journey against the atrocities of society."