For every male child she delivered she was paid fifty paise and if it was a girl she got less than that. No birth went amiss so long as that midwife was in charge. It was all due to that smart bed.Īyya’s third mission was to send word to the midwife. It could not be attributed even to the midwife’s skill. That we survived childbirth was not because we were smart or because Amma was clever. So he believed the bed brought luck to all of his children. That bed was an heirloom from Ayya’s family. Amma could lower herself into that hollow on her own, but to get out of it two people had to hold on to her and haul her out. The mattress, when spread out on the lax springs, would sag in the middle. Ayya would bring it inside the house, set it up, spread a cotton mattress on it and make Amma lie down on it. A steel folding spring bed lay in the cattle shed. Ayya would borrow that clock so that the exact time of birth of his children could be recorded.
Only one house in our village boasted a timepiece that could be set in motion by winding it up. Ayya would immediately go into action there were three duties he had to fulfill. Sometime during the evening Amma would speak of the beginnings of piercing pains in her abdomen. A midwife took care of all Amma’s deliveries. And, as if by prior agreement, we were all born during the night.
We could neither peer at nor pore over them. Ayya bundled up all of them and locked them away in a wooden chest. Horoscopes were written for each of us in separate notebooks. As soon as his children were born, he had their horoscopes cast by a famous astrologer of our village.
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