9- Marriage/ Family /Pathology

Marriage/family /Pathology
College ended and time came for the daughters to get settled and parents sent for them for the next task before them.
Father brought me up as a son but when it came to marriage he wanted to select the right ‘master’ by advertising ‘me ‘in the matrimonial market of the newspaper.
Life took a turn, a sharp one. I felt crushed – I lost my own control and felt a slavery of thoughts and actions. Things started losing meaning with an upsurge of emotions. Whilst mother had been conservative, father had always encouraged liberal views, but here he was not going to compromise.

Looking back I really cannot tell if we knew what ‘love’ was. Of course there had been what one thought then, some matching of chemistries and pairing up. For me, as for many like me, there were triads and confusions. Rakesh had followed me and had wowed to get me in the end.

So I rebelled and in my confusion and helplessness got married to him secretly.
To our good fortune, when disclosed, both sides of Parents acted graciously and accepted our ‘act’ announcing it formally by a ‘reception’ at the Oberoi, the then, only 5 star of Delhi. After all I had been the ‘star’ of Babuji’s life.
Rakesh was the eldest of 4 brothers so; I was welcomed as the first daughter of their house.

My Marriage however threw my father into his first serious ’Depression’, which effected me for years to come.

We went for our Honey-moon to Bombay and Goa.
The Sea was green – it was deep – it was vast. It was stormy, the waves relentless. The pearls scattered in river Mondovi got mixed in the waters with the lights of Panjim. And so lay life before us.

Not knowing how fertile I was, I conceived ‘Divya to be’ immediately.
Jobs were scarce, doctors not well paid. It was the year of the mid-60s, the ‘Brain drain’ had begun and at least 80% of our batch mates flew away, mostly to UK others to USA. It was a wave that swept us too to leave home and country. Ironically, we had pushed the British out of India and yet followed them back.
We were given ‘job vouchers’ as entry tickets and jobs were allotted in small city hospitals. Rakesh started his Medical House-man ship on the Isle of Wight at the southern tip of England. I followed as a wife carrying my 6 month old Divya dressed in a Pink knitted suit, on my shoulder.
The change was sudden, landing at huge Heathrow. In the bathrooms, Indian ladies clad in Salwar kameez smiled, cleaning the floors. It was strangely not a welcome ‘Welcome’. Well at least there were no Coolies at Charring Cross railway station. The train ride to Southampton was comfortable followed by hovercraft to the island. The hovercraft did hover on the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, carrying about 30 of us reaching the other shore.
St. Mary’s hospital provided us with reasonably furnished 2 room apartments with a cleaning lady for the kitchen shared by 2 married doctors, the other from UK. We the wives made sure the kitchen was not too dirty and the dishes too greasy ‘before’ she came. The initial graduation was from the Indian to the Western toilet, the washing to wiping with paper, the bucket bath to the tub bath and the learning to clean the pot and the tub. Dealing with the meals with sparse vegetables, Uncle Brown’s rice and British or New Zealand lamb to begin with and then ‘tinned foods’ for us as well Divya. “Yes Mama! I should have learnt how to cook”, here I was……. No doctor status, ‘no many things’ that go with it in India, but pretending to be happy with ‘my handsome husband’ and ‘big black eyed beautiful daughter’.
Doctors were needed; I would do locum casualty/emergency clinics to fill in. It was amazing how much the nurses knew and how good they were, totally disciplined, dedicated and helpful. The English knew when to work and when to play. Work was work, serious, intended for a purpose. One learnt because one wished to learn, one wished to learn because it came from within and needed to be understood. It was after going ‘West’ that I started to learn, not to finish the course or pass the exam or become a doctor as ‘had been planned’.
During a wk-end trip to London to see Kusum, my friend from MAMC, I forgot my ‘pill’ and lo and behold got ‘fertile’ again. An angry me but had to pay the price for the mini /maxi carelessness. Became a ‘mother to be’ again. I reconciled to my homely life and the Winter Snow of the Island till one ‘antenatal check’.
It had been a bright, rare, Sunny day in the month of November. I wore a special flowery dress I had made. The midwife, who had complained that I was getting rather too plump last time, put me on the machine and adjusted her scales. “Well the baby is taking some of your fat – you are the same, my dear”. Inside I went for the ‘Check’ “Kicking about?” the doc asked; patting me and then ‘it’ he inquired.
“Think it is taking a bit of rest” I said- “been a little quiet this weekend”.
He was feeling it up and down, side to side; he was putting his ear to it. He was listening with another instrument, another machine. I had been lying still – and all of a sudden the news had come. There was no fetal heart beat.
“But why? Why doctor, has it happened” I had gone on repeating, feeling numb inside. The doctor could not say!
Rakesh came looking cheerful; Boss had been pleased with him that day.
“Rakesh our baby is dead – it is dead, do you know?”

The baby was dead. “There is no need to be panicky it is best to wait; soon there would follow labor and I would deliver.’’ The Doc pronounced.
From that day on, every morning when I lay in the bath there it was, before me, the sight of the dead thing inside. I writhed with the thought. At night I got the worst night mares. I felt like my body was a graveyard wherein was buried a precious thing of my life. Days passed by – nothing seemed to happen.

Now it was the eve of Christmas. Every house was gay inside. Every room had decorations as if to welcome the holy baby. Outside the window were soft snowy flakes that came noiselessly and majestically layer upon layer. Suddenly I felt a twist in my tummy, it was only a moment – it happened again and again and again.
“Oh God not tonight”, – tears poured, another wave of the terrible pain.

It was morning, still snowing softly. I did not have it inside me anymore.

Instead was, a strange emptiness, a pain deep within. The agony so unbearable I wished I would drift from this world. A mist covering the eyes dried by it self. All the time was that nagging, quivering continuous pain – pain not expressed, not seen, just felt----.
It consumed me, my thoughts, my very being.

Rakesh traveled to Bombay and left Divya, a year and a half old, with his mother who took care of her for some time.

I decided to do Pathology as had been earlier decided by my father, to go with ‘husband’s medical practice’ in possible future settlement in Delhi.

The first was a house job in Hematology followed by Bacteriology at Mile-end Hospital in East London. Needless to say, it felt good. I was a student again, commuting to meet Rakesh on wk-ends, who also had shifted to the vicinity.

Then I did a years’ stint at Hosp. for Sick Children Gt. Ormond Street, doing Virology under Proff. Dudgen.
He was the giant researcher of Rubella. This would take me to the central parts of London like the Soho square with its cobbled stone lanes, so familiar in a way after having read Dickens, Bernard Shaw’s ‘My fair lady’ and other English fiction growing up.

Finally, took Histo-pathology & Morbid Anatomy at Edgware Gen. Hosp.in the North which I liked the most. By now Rakesh and I were both Registrars at Edgware, ‘he a Chest Physician’, never mind how much he smoked.

Our old friends, Sabharwals enthused us to buy a Home which we did, although we had to borrow the ‘down payment’ from Shashi’s husband Mohan. Shashi’s marriage had followed mine within the year as my Father wished, of his choice and I felt ever grateful to her for acceding.
The discipline of living, of thinking, of doing, of planning, of succeeding began to take a deeper meaning. What ever one did at home or in the hospital was not to please father, husband, or the ‘other’ but to perform a better task for the sake of the task itself. No supervisor was watching how much time and how I was spending it, but how well I actually did in the end.
Whilst in the ‘Hospital for Sick children’ at Great Ormond street, an infant got diarrhea, not only his stools but the diapers he used, the mattress he lay on, the nurses station, the kitchen gadgets, the cooks had to be swabbed and tested for the source of infection. Hilarious as it may sound, it was after all the best children’s hosp. on the globe.
I remember a second year med. student came to see a slide of histology in the lab. to me. He had originally seen the patient with ‘pain abdomen’ in Casualty, admitted him for investigations, attended his surgery in the Operation theatre, followed up the specimen of appendix as we had sliced, paraffin embedded and stained it. He now came to see the acute inflammatory cells in the Appendix. (In Delhi, we would identify the slide from the small circles in the middle and guess the diagnosis for the exam).
My Consultant, Dr Patterson would sit on the double Microscope with me and showed the transition from a regular cell to one with enlarging nucleus, to one now getting more vicious, ready to swallow the one next to it and thus becoming more and more malignant in the process. Even Bert, the Mortuary attendant was so much help with post-mortems; I looked forward to do them.
There was certain dynamism in teaching and learning.
Shree who was also doing Pathology and I, would trudge to the Academic world at Hammersmith Institute to hear the ‘Authorities’. I finally finished with the learning of ‘what caused and happened in disease’ and obtained the ‘Diploma in Clinical Pathology’ from the University of London.

Veena