Bringing in baby

My friends seem to get pregnant a lot. Not the same friend each time, but the baby bug is biting its way through the small group that I call mine. Not that long ago, it was Fish Face, as we lovingly called her – or should I say ‘name changed on request’ – who told me in a rather coy paragraph in a letter (where she was living at the time, letters by snail mail were the only way to communicate) that I would be an aunt (turned out that I was actually Godmama) in a few months. From then on, the story took on proportions of a comic melodrama (yes, I know, it is a bit of a contradiction in terms, but it describes the situation perfectly) of epic and exhausting proportions.

It really began for me when my friend came back to Mumbai from the fondly-titled ‘hinterland’. She was enormous by then, and I got an armful of bulging middle that kicked me smartly when I gave her (and it) a hello hug. And I was appointed (by myself and her mother) her bodyguard. When she wandered about the city, tummy leading, to find just that perfect crib, that perfect set of booties or that perfect nursing bra, I followed close behind, gathering up packages and saying rude words under my breath as she galloped from counter to counter, store to store and suburb or urbs prima.

My vocabulary took on a whole new dimension on one very hot and sunny afternoon when Fish Face, eight months pregnant, suddenly and with no indication whatsoever dived across three lanes of traffic to balance precariously on the divider of the dangerously crowded road to peek into a shop window that had a ‘nice pair of jeans I could wear after the baby is born’, she explained as I stood in front of her like Medusa, forbidding glare, flying hair and all, demanding to know just what in all heck she was trying to do. My blood pressure and choler hit the roof when Fish Face stuck her lower lip out and whined that all she wanted to do was to be less fat and hot and uncomfortable. Still incoherently sputtering, I shoved her into a cab for the drive home and called her mother to say that I quit. The job was just too much for me to handle!

And then it came time for the baby to happen. Confined at home because of her size, swollen ankles and sheer bad-temperedness at not being able to move the way she normally did, quick and agile, she grouched at everyone who said anything to her. I called a few times a day (or was it an hour) to check that all was well. The due date for the baby came and went. With the doctor’s connivance, we fed Fish Face bananas, castor oil, prunes…all that was guaranteed by tradition and folklore to push her into the delivery room. Finally, some days after she should have popped, she was popped – into hospital, with an epidural shot to induce labour. I am told that she screamed words no one had heard before and no one wanted to hear again, as she brought into the world the little red noisemaker that was my goddaughter. Of course, we fought about the fact that I saw the infant only a week later, but that is a whole different story.

Now I am told that my buddy Belachameli (yes, another name changed) is pregnant. A very pretty young woman, she took her time to get to that state, but has made whoever knows about it very happy. For now, she is keeping all of us busy complaining about her lack of appetite, nausea, aversion to medicines and more, adding all her delightful tendencies to paranoia and delusion to possible (and probable, she will insist, I know) ailments, from the insignificantly minor to the amazingly fatal. But we all excuse every single one of her grouches. After all, she is in a ‘delicate state’ and must be allowed to be temperamental. I shudder to think what she will do and say when her tummy swells and her ankles do, too. At least I am far enough away to be out of reach when she starts throwing things, tantrums, vases, plates and more! And I will have, at the end of it all, a new playmate.