Miscellanea / Sylvia Khan

...Then the Great Finger in the Sky callously flicked me into the chaotic and hysteria-ridden state of imminent motherhood

When I look around me, I see children. Several of them. I am defined by them. Life without them is like life on Mars, a possibility, but hard to imagine. Almost as hard to imagine is the time in my life when I had the uncertain distinction of being possibly the only Indian woman on the planet with absolutely no experience with children.

At the start of it all, my life was even keeled and coasting along nicely till the Great Finger in the Sky callously flicked me into the chaotic and hysteria-ridden state of imminent motherhood.

Here then was the 'good news', the absence of which had been a constant assault on me since I entered into the blessed state of holy matrimony. I've never understood the need for euphemism for a state considered natural, in a country obsessed with fertility. Even the ostensibly educated had coyly asked me whether I had some 'good news' to give the world. 'The World' obviously having nothing better to do than to hold its collective breath till the auspicious moment.

Well meant, but useless hints apart, I'd never really been hysterical (more apt a word than one would imagine at first glance), about motherhood. In keeping with the dominant thesis of the paperback romance, I'd expected that Nature would take its course, and I would shyly whisper my news (that word again), to the proud father-to-be. He would then fold me in his manly arms and tell me how wonderful I was. And more importantly, what a heroine I was for embarking on the well documented horrors of pregnancy and childbirth.

So when I realised one day that I had been spared the Peril, only to be let in for the Mother of All Perils, I was calm (Nature was taking its course), but unprepared (I had no experience of anything further up the food chain than puppies).

My husband tried to put things into perspective by saying ''Relax! Millions of people have done this before us. How much can we screw up?'' Fortunately that was rhetoric. I could have advanced an opinion, or several on the extent to which we could have done just that. And what was this word ''us'' that he used, clearly incorrectly, since it looked like I was the one doing all the doing.

In the movies, Hindi, Hollywood or even serious Italian black and white, the prospective mum always has an experienced female second lead, to confide her girlish worries to. Life did not imitate Art in this case. I was surrounded by inept and inefficient people much like myself. There was my husband, who had plebianised my condition to a completely unacceptable extent. Then there was my best friend, who took his cue from Hindi cinema ("Do you want some kairi? The women in Hindi movies always seem to!'') I also had two women friends, single and no kids, and my bai Anita - married with a kid.

Naturally, with that ocean of experience, her credentials wiped out the competition and Anita zoomed into top slot as Advisor to the Inept.

I still remember the nonchalance with which she said ''Arre kuch nahi hoga. Zara ulti-pulti hoga, zara chakkar ayega, kuch farak nahi padega!'' (Roughly - Nothing's going to happen. You'll puke a bit, faint a bit - no problem.) Her bravado did nothing for me. I did the only thing I could think of. I took to my bed and comforted myself with Agatha Christie, Five Star bars and jeera golis. I couldn't sustain the big sulk. For one thing, I could already recite all my Christies, for another I felt sick as a dog.

Then suddenly, one magical day, it was over and I could inhale the warm kitchen smells of tea, coffee and frying masala without a quick trip to the loo.

I remember deciding to take matters into my capable-once-more hands. I had to find out more about this child care thing. So, I went to who I thought were the experts - the nurses at the Maternity Centre. I requested them to show me babies and baby stuff, with the correctly humble I-am-an-idiot expression on my face. Peals of girlish laughter ensued, and the nurses station was abandoned for the hilarity of giving me the grand tour. ''Oh Sylvia, you are such a funny!'' one of them gasped between giggles. Funny what? Funny inept? Funny Peculiar? Funny strange and abnormal?

Anyway, there I was, nose to the window, gaping zenophobically at ruminant newborns. They were amazingly tiny and wizened, and so, well, boring. I remember thinking that maybe the whole motherhood thing wasn't all the movies gushed that it would be.

I'd always seen myself much like the 'eighties woman' - educated, empowered, in control. Not much of that was in evidence as I bumbled about at that time. I retreated, and dived into my copy of Everywoman coming up only for a consultation with Dr Spock. In fact, I didn't really emerge till my first child was well into her sixth month on Planet Pollution.

That was many moons and many children ago. Looking at the hordes about me today, the whole process has assumed a certain dream-like, film-like quality reminiscent of Rosemary's Baby or the Elm Street series. A case of life imitating, well, not Art, but a cheap imitation of it.

Illustrations: Dominic Xavier