Making your own bad luck

People Like Them

"How unfortunate!" they said a few days later, when she lost her job as a part-time servant because she was too weakened by the birth of her fourth child.

But when her husband lost his job as an autorickshaw driver days after that, all her neighbours in the RK Puram slum cluster agreed that Asha's newborn child had brought this run of ill-luck on her family.

People began to whisper that she was born under the influence of Saturn, the malignant planet. That if Asha and her husband had done special pujas after her birth, all this won't have happened.

"We realised that she was unlucky for us only weeks after she was born," recounted Asha, lines of worry prominent on her face. "I was so ill and tired after giving birth that within a week, I got fired for not being able to work properly," said she, adding, "my employer never considered the fact that I had to rear my elder three, give them two square meals a day, look after the new baby "" and work too."

They became chronically short of money after that. Asha begged an old employer to take her back after her husband too lost his job and they had to tap their meager savings to feed their children.

"Feeding one or two children wouldn't have been so difficult "" but four hungry mouths were impossible!" said she. "Earlier when my husband had his auto-driving job, he often brought home extra money when he managed to fiddle with his meter.

But lately, the administration dealt so severely with such cases that he couldn't do that anymore. And so the little extra we were able to buy milk and fruits with, also stopped, adding to our woes," said she.

Trying to change her mood, I asked what they'd named their latest offspring. "Nothing yet, so everyone just calls her Dukhi," she shrugged. She told me that her husband was seriously considering returning to their village, a few kilometres from Mathura, but Asha was reluctant to do so.

"He'll be able to till the family plot, but what about our children? How can I send them to a village school after they've studied in Delhi?" she said.

But he reasoned that even though she'd be unlikely to find paid work in the village, at least their living expenses would be lower. Most importantly, they'd be able to feed their eldest daughter better, or else she wouldn't be able to fight her disease.

Asha came to say goodbye to me soon after. Three-month-old Dukhi still had no other name. She said tearfully, "when we migrated to Delhi fifteen years ago, we never thought we'd have to return poorer than before, and with four kids to support! Oh what a lot of ill-luck this child has brought us!" she wailed, glaring at the baby.

I suggested tentatively that perhaps their non-use of family planning measures had brought greater misfortune to their home than poor Dukhi had.

"With fewer children, your expenses would have been lower and you would have been able to look after them better," I remarked. Asha replied, "yes, I also often think that it would have been better if Dukhi hadn't been born at all!" Immersed in her tale of misfortune, Asha had misunderstood what I'd said. Or was the misunderstanding deliberate? I don't really know.